Hand in Glove

CHAPTER FIVE Postscript to a Party

Connie raised no objections to Alleyn’s keeping the letters, and with them both in his pocket he asked if he might see Miss Ralston and Mr. Leiss. She said that they were still asleep in their rooms and added with a slight hint of gratification that they had attended the Baynesholme festivities.

“One of Désirée Bantling’s dotty parties,” she said. “They go on till all hours. Moppett left a note asking not to be roused.”

“It’s now one o’clock,” Alleyn said, “and I’m afraid I shall have to disturb Mr. Leiss.”

He thought she was going to protest, but at that moment the Pekingese set up a petulant demonstration, scratching at the door and raising a crescendo of imperative yaps.

“Clever boy!” Connie said distractedly. “I’m coming!” She went to the door. “I’ll have to see to this,” she said, “in the garden.”

“Of course,” Alleyn agreed. He followed them into the hall and saw them out through the front door. Once in the garden the Pekingese bolted for a newly raked flower-bed.

“Oh, no!” Connie ejaculated. “After lunch,” she shouted as she hastened in pursuit of her pet. “Come back later.”

The Pekingese tore round a corner of the house and she followed it.

Alleyn re-entered the house and went quickly upstairs.

On the landing he encountered Trudi, the maid, who showed him the visitors’ rooms. They were on two sides of a passage.

“Mr. Leiss?” Alleyn asked.

A glint of feminine awareness momentarily transfigured Trudi’s not very expressive face.

“He is sleeping,” she said. “I looked at him. He sleeps like a god.”

“We’ll see what he wakes like,” Alleyn said, tipping her rather handsomely. “Thank you, Trudi.”

He tapped smartly on the door and went in.

The room was masked from its entrance by an old-fashioned scrap screen. Behind this a languid, indefinably Cockney voice said: “Come in.”

Mr. Leiss was awake but Alleyn thought he saw what Trudi meant.

The violet silk pajama jacket was open, the torso bronzed, smooth and rather shiny as well as hirsute. A platinum chain lay on the chest. The glistening hair was slightly disarranged and the large brown eyes were open. When they lighted upon Alleyn they narrowed. There was a slight convulsive movement under the bedclothes. The room smelt dreadfully of some indefinable unguent.

“Mr. Leiss?” Alleyn said. “I’m sorry to disturb you. I am a police officer.”

A very old familiar look started up in Leonard’s face: a look of impertinence, cageyness, conceit and fear. It was there as if it had been jerked up from within and in a moment it was gone.

“I don’t quite follow you,” Leonard said. Something had gone amiss with his voice. He cleared his throat and recovered. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

He raised himself on his elbow, plumped up his pillows and lay back on them. He reached out languidly for a cigarette case and lighter on his bedside table. The ashtray was already overloaded.

“How can I help you?” he said and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and blew out a thin vapour.

“You can help me,” Alleyn said, “by answering one or two questions about your movements since you arrived at Little Codling yesterday morning.”

Leonard raised his eyebrows and exhaled a drift of vapour. “And just why,” he asked easily, “should I do that small thing?”

“For reasons,” Alleyn said, “that will explain themselves in due course. First of all, there’s the matter of an attempted car purchase. You gave Mr. Pyke Period and Mr. Cartell and Miss Cartell as references. They considered you had no authority to do so. I suggest,” Alleyn went on, “that you don’t offer the usual unconvincing explanations. They really won’t do. Fortunately for the other persons involved, the deal collapsed; and, apart from adding to your record, the incident has only one point of interest: it made Mr. Cartell very angry.” He stopped and looked hard at Leonard. “Didn’t it?” he asked.

“Look,” Leonard drawled, “do me a favour and get the hell out of this, will you?”

“Next,” Alleyn went on, “there’s the business of Mr. Period’s cigarette case.”

It was obvious that Leonard was prepared for this. He went at once into an elaborate pantomime of turning up his eyes, wagging his head and waving his fingers. “No, honestly,” he ejaculated. “It’s too much. Not again!”

“Oh?” Alleyn mildly remarked. “Again? Who’s been tackling you about Mr. Period’s cigarette case? Mr. Cartell?”

Leonard took his time. “I don’t,” he said at last, “like your tone. I resent it, in fact.” He looked at Alleyn through half-closed eyes and seemed to come to a decision. “Pardon me,” he added, “if I appear abrupt. As a matter of fact, we had a latish party up at Baynesholme. Quite a show. Her ladyship certainly knows how to turn it on.”

Alleyn caught himself wondering what on earth in charity and forbearance could be said for Leonard Leiss. It was an unprofessional attitude and he abandoned it.

“Mr. Cartell spoke to you about the cigarette case,” he said, taking a sizable chance, “when he called here yesterday evening.”

“Who—” Leonard began and pulled himself together. “Look,” he said, “have you been talking to other people?”

“Oh, yes, several.”

“To him?” Leonard demanded. “To Cartell?”

There was a long pause.

“No,” Alleyn said. “Not to him.”

“Then who — Here!” Leonard ejaculated. “There’s something funny about all this. What is it?”

“I’ll answer that one,” Alleyn said, “when you tell me what you did with Mr. Period’s cigarette case. Now don’t,” he went on, raising a finger, “say you don’t know anything about it I’ve seen the dining-room window. It can’t be opened from the outside. It was shut during luncheon. You and Miss Ralston examined the case by the window and left it on the sill. No one else was near the window. When the man came in to clear, the window was open and the case had gone.”

“So he says.”

“So he says, and I believe him.”

“Pardon me if I seem to be teaching you your job,” Leonard said, “but if I was going to pinch this dreary old bit of tat, why would I open the window? Why not put it in my pocket there and then?”

“Because you would then quite obviously be the thief, Mr. Leiss. If you or Miss Ralston left it on the sill and returned by way of the garden path—”

“How the hell—” Leonard began and then changed his mind. “I don’t accept that,” he said. “I resent it, in fact.”

“Did you smoke any of Mr. Period’s cigarettes?”

“Only one, thank you very much. Turkish muck.”

“Did Miss Ralston?”

“Same story. Now, look,” Leonard began with a sort of spurious candour. “There’s such a thing as collusion, isn’t there? We left this morsel of antiquery on the sill. All right. This man — Alfred Whathaveyou — opens the window. The workmen in the lane get the office from him and it’s all as sweet as kiss-your-hand.”

“And would you suggest that we search the men in the lane?”

“Why not? Do no harm, would it?”

“We might even catch them handing the case round after elevenses?”

“That’s right,” Leonard said coolly. “You might at that. Or, they might have cached it on the spot. You can search this room, or me or my car or my girlfriend. Only too pleased. The innocent don’t have anything to hide, do they?” asked Leonard.

“Nor do the guilty, when they’ve dumped the evidence.”

Leonard ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. “Fair enough,” he said. “So what?”

“Mr. Leiss,” Alleyn said, “the cigarette case has been found.”

A second flickered past before Leonard, in a tone of righteous astonishment said: “Found! Well, I ask you! Found! So why come at me? Where?”

“In my opinion, exactly where you dropped it. Down the drain.”

The door was thrust open. On the far side of the screen a feminine voice said: “Sorry, darling, but you’ll have to rouse up.” The door was shut. “We are in a spot of bother,” the voice continued as its owner came round the screen. “Old Cartell, dead as a doornail and down the drain!”

When Moppett saw Alleyn she clapped her hands to her mouth and eyed him over the top.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she said. “Auntie Con thought you’d gone.”

She was a dishevelled figure, half saved by her youth and held together in a négligé that was as unfresh as it was elaborate. “Isn’t it frightful?” she said. “Poor Uncle Hal! I can’t believe it!”

Either she was less perturbed than Leonard or several times tougher. He had turned a very ill colour and had jerked cigarette ash across his chest.

“What the hell are you talking about?” he said.

“Didn’t you know?” Moppett exclaimed, and then to Alleyn, “Haven’t you told him?”

“Miss Ralston,” Alleyn said, “you have saved me the trouble. It is Miss Ralston, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. Sorry,” Moppett went on after a moment, “if I’m interupting something. I’ll sweep myself out, shall I? See you, ducks,” she added in Cockney to Leonard.

“Don’t go, if you please,” said Alleyn. “You may be able to help us. Can you tell me where you and Mr. Leiss lost Mr. Period’s cigarette case?”

“No, she can’t,” Leonard intervened. “Because we didn’t. We never had it. We don’t know anything about it.”

Moppett opened her eyes very wide and her mouth slightly. She turned in fairly convincing bewilderment from Leonard to Alleyn.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “P.P.’s cigarette case? Do you mean the old one he showed us when we lunched with him?”

“Yes,” Alleyn agreed. “That’s the one I mean.”

“Lenny, darling, what did happen to it, do you remember? I know! We left it on the window sill. Didn’t we? In the dining-room?”

“O.K., O.K., like I’ve been telling the Chief Godal-mighty High Commissioner,” Leonard said and behind his alarm, his fluctuating style and his near-Americanisms, there flashed up an unrepentant barrow-boy. “So now it’s been found. So what?”

“It’s been found,” Alleyn said, “in the open drain a few inches from Mr. Cartell’s body.”

Leonard seemed to retreat into himself. It was as if he shortened and compressed his defenses.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. He shot a glance at Moppett. “That’s a very nasty suggestion, isn’t it? I don’t get the picture.”

“The picture will emerge in due course. A minute or two ago,” Alleyn said, “you told me I was welcome to search this room. Do you hold to that?”

Leonard went through the pantomime of inspecting his fingernails but gave it up on finding his hands were unsteady.

“Naturally,” he murmured. “Like I said. Nothing to hide.”

“Good. Please don’t go, Miss Ralston,” Alleyn continued as Moppett showed some sign of doing so. “I shan’t be long.”

He had moved over to the wardrobe and opened the door when he felt a touch on his arm. He turned and there was Moppett, smelling of scent, hair and bed, gazing into his face, unmistakably palpitating.

“I won’t go, of course,” she said opening her eyes very wide, “if you don’t want me to, but you can see, can’t you, that I’m not actually dressed for the prevailing climate? It’s a trifle chilly, this morning, isn’t it?”

“I’m sure Mr. Leiss will lend you his dressing-gown.”

It was a brocade and velvet affair and lay across the foot of the bed. She put it on.

“Give us a fag, ducks,” she said to Leonard.

“Help yourself.”

She reached for his case. “It’s not one of those…?” she began and then stopped short. “Fanks, ducks,” she said and lit a cigarette, lounging across the bed.

The room grew redolent of Virginian tobacco.

The wardrobe doors were lined with looking-glass. In them Alleyn caught a momentary glimpse of Moppett leaning urgently towards Leonard and of Leonard baring his teeth at her. He mouthed something and closed his hand over her wrist. The cigarette quivered between her fingers. Leonard turned his head as Alleyn moved the door and their images swung out of sight.

Alleyn’s fingers slid into the pockets of Leonard’s checked suit, dinner suit and camel’s-hair overcoat. They discovered three greasy combs, a pair of wash-leather gloves, a membership card from a Soho club called La Hacienda, a handkerchief, loose change, a pocketbook and finally, in the evening trousers and the overcoat, the object of their search: strands of cigarette tobacco. He withdrew a thread and sniffed at it. Turkish. The hinges of Mr. Period’s case, he had noticed, were a bit loose.

He came out from behind the wardrobe door with the garments in question over his arm. Moppett, who now had her feet up, exclaimed with a fair show of gaitey: “Look, Face, he’s going to valet you.”

Alleyn said: “I’d like to borrow these things for the moment. I’ll give you a receipt, of course.”

“Like hell you will,” Leonard ejaculated.

“If you object, I can apply for a search warrant”

“Darling, don’t be bloody-minded,” Moppett said. “After all, what does it matter?”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Leonard mumbled through bleached lips. “That’s what I object to. People break in without a word of warning and start talking about bodies and — and—”

“And false pretenses. And attempted fraud. And theft,” Alleyn put in. “As you say, it’s the principal of the thing. May I borrow these garments?”

“O.K., O.K., O.K.”

“Thank you.”

Alleyn laid the overcoat and dinner suit across a chair and then went methodically through a suitcase and the drawers of a tallboy: there, wrapped in a sock, he came upon a flick-knife. He turned, with it in his hand, and found Leonard staring at him.

“This,” Alleyn said, “is illegal. Where did you get it?”

“I picked it up,” Leonard said, “in the street. Illegal, is it? Fancy.”

“I shall take care of it.”

Leonard whispered something to Moppett, who laughed immoderately and said: “Oh, Lord!” in a manner that contrived to be disproportionately offensive.

Alleyn then sat at a small desk in a corner of the room. He removed Leonard’s pocketbook from his dinner jacket and examined the contents, which embraced five pounds in notes and a photograph of Miss Ralston in the nude. They say that nothing shocks a police officer, but Alleyn found himself scandalized. He listed the contents of the pocketbook and wrote a receipt for them, which he handed, with the pocketbook, to Leonard.

“I don’t expect to be long over this,” he said. “In the meantime I should like a word with you, if you please, Miss Ralston.”

“What for?” Leonard interposed quickly, and to Moppett: “You don’t have to talk to him.”

“Darling,” Moppett said. “Manners! And I’ll have you know I’m simply dying to talk to the — Inspector, is it? Or Super? I’m sure it’s Super. Do we withdraw?”

She was stretched across the foot of the bed with her chin in her hands: a “lost girl,” Alleyn thought, adopting the Victorian phrase, if ever I saw one.

He walked over to the window and was rewarded by the sight of Inspector Fox seated in a police car in Miss Cartell’s drive. He looked up. Alleyn made a face at him and crooked a finger. Fox began to climb out of the car.

“If you don’t mind,” Alleyn said to Moppett, “we’ll move into the passage.”

“Thrilled to oblige,” Moppett said. Drawing Leonard’s gown tightly about her she walked round the screen and out of the door.

Alleyn turned to Leonard, “I shall have to ask you,” he said, “to stay here for the time being.”

“It’s not convenient.”

“Nevertheless you will be well advised to stay. What is your address in London?”

“76 Castlereagh Walk S.W. 14. Though why—”

“If you return there,” Alleyn said, “you will be kept under observation. Take your choice.”

He followed Moppett into the passage. He found her arranging her back against the wall and her cigarette in the corner of her mouth. Alleyn could hear Mr. Fox’s bass voice rumbling downstairs.

“What can I do for you, Super?” Moppett asked with the slight smile of the film underworldling.

“You can stop being an ass,” he rejoined tartly. “I don’t know why I waste time telling you this, but if you don’t you may find yourself in serious trouble. Think that one out, if you can, and stop smirking at me,” Alleyn said, rounding off what was possibly the most professional speech of his career.

“Oi!” said Moppett. “Who’s in a naughty rage?”

Alleyn heard Miss Cartell’s edgeless voice directing Mr. Fox upstairs. He looked over the bannister and saw her upturned face, blunt, red and vulnerable. His distaste for Moppett was exacerbated. There she stood, conceited, shifty and complacent as they come, without scruple or compassion. And there belowstairs was her guardian, wide open to anything this detestable girl liked to hand out to her.

Fox could be heard saying in a comfortable voice: “Thank you very much, Miss Cartell. I’ll find my own way.”

“More Force?” Moppett remarked. “Delicious!”

“This is Inspector Fox,” Aileyn said as his colleague appeared. He handed Leonard’s dinner suit and overcoat to Fox. “General routine check,” he said, “and I’d like you to witness something I’m going to say to Miss Mary Ralston.”

“Good afternoon, Miss Ralston,” Fox said pleasantly. He hung Leonard’s garments over the bannister and produced his notebook. The half-smile did not leave Moppett’s face but seemed, rather, to remain there by a sort of oversight.

“Understand this,” Alleyn continued, speaking to Moppett. “We are investigating a capital crime and I have, I believe, proof that last night the cigarette case in question was in the possession of that unspeakable young man of yours. It was found by Mr. Cartell’s body and Mr. Cartell has been murdered.”

“Murdered!” she ejaculated. “He hasn’t!” And then she went very white round the mouth. “I can’t believe you,” she said. “People like him don’t get murdered. Why?”

“For one of the familiar motives,” Alleyn said. “For knowing something damaging about someone else. Or threatening to take action against somebody. Financial troubles. Might be anything.”

“Auntie Con said it was an accident.”

“I daresay she didn’t want to upset you.”

“Bloody dumb of her!” Moppett said viciously.

“Obviously you don’t feel the same concern for her. But if you did, in the smallest degree, you would answer my questions truthfully. If you’ve any sense, you’ll do so for your own sake.”

“Why?’

“To save yourself from the suspicion of something much more serious than theft.”

She seemed to contract inside Leonard’s dressing-gown. “I don’t know what you mean. I don’t know anything about it.”

Alleyn thought: Are these two wretched young no-goods in the fatal line? Is that to be the stale, deadly familiar end?

He said: “If you stole the cigarette case, or Mr. Leiss stole it, or you both stole it in collusion, and, if, for one reason or another, you dropped it in the ditch last night, you will be well advised to say so.”

“How do I know that? You’re trying to trap me.”

Alleyn said patiently: “Believe me, I’m not concerned to trap the innocent. Nor, at the moment, am I primarily interested in theft.”

“Then you’re trying to bribe me.”

This observation, showing as it did a flash of perception, was infuriating.

“I can neither bribe nor threaten,” he said. “But I can warn you, and I do. You’re in a position of great danger. You, personally. Do you know what happens to people who withhold evidence in a case of homicide? Do you know what happens to accessories before the fact of such a crime? Do you?”

Her face crumpled suddenly like a child’s and her enormous shallow eyes overflowed.

“All right,” she said. “All right. I’ll tell you. But it wasn’t anything. You’ve got it all wrong. It was—”

“Well?”

“It was all a mistake,” Moppett whispered.

The bedroom door opened and Leonard came out in his violet pajamas.

“You keep your great big beautiful trap shut, honey,” he said. He stood behind Moppett, holding her arms. He really would, Alleyn had time to consider, do rather well in a certain type of film.

“Mr. Leiss,” he said, “will you be kind enough to take yourself out of this?”

But, even as he said it, he knew it was no good. With astonishing virtuosity Moppett, after a single ejaculation of pain and a terrified glance at Leonard, leant back against him, falling abruptly into the role of seductive accessory. The tears still stood in her eyes and her mouth twitched as his fingers bit into her arm. She contrived a smile.

“Don’t worry, darling,” she said, rubbing her head against Leonard. “I’m not saying a thing.”

“That’s my girl,” said Leonard savagely.

“Not,” Mr. Fox remarked as they drove away, “the type of young people you’d expect to find in this environment.”

“Not County, you think?” Alleyn returned.

“Certainly not,” Fox said primly. “Leiss, now — a bad type that. Wide boy. Only a matter of time before he’s inside for a tied stretch. But the young lady’s a different story. Or ought to be,” Fox said after a pause. “Or ought to be,” he repeated heavily.

“The young lady,” Alleyn said tartly, “is a young stinker. Look, Fox! There are threads of the Period cigarette tobacco in Leiss’s pocket. Bob Williams’ll lay on a vacuum cleaner, I daresay. Go through the pockets and return the unspeakable garments, will you? And check his dabs from the oddments in the pockets. To my mind, there’s no doubt they pinched the cigarette case. Suppose Cartell or Period or both cut up rough? What then?”

“Ah,” Fox said. “Exactly. And suppose Mr. Cartell threatend to go to the police and they set the trap for him and accidentally dropped the case in doing it?”

“All right. Suppose they did. Now as to their actions on the scene of the crime, we’ve got that pleasant child, Nicola Maitland-Mayne, for a witness; but she was in the throes of young love and may have missed one or two tricks. I’ll check with her young man, although he was probably further gone than she. All right. I’ll drop you at the Station and return to the genteel assault on Mr. Pyke Period. He’ll have lunched by now. What about you?”

“Or you, Mr. Alleyn, if it comes to that.”

“I think I’ll press on, Br’er Fox. Get yourself a morsel of cheese and pickle at the pub and see if there’s anything more to be extracted from that cagey little job, Alfred Belt.”

“As a matter of fact,” Fox confessed, “Mr. Belt and Mrs. Mitchell, the cook, who seems to be a very superior type of woman, suggested I should drop in for a snack later in the day. Mrs. Mitchell went so far as to indicate she’d set something cold aside.”

“I might have known it,” Alleyn said. “Meet you at the Station at fiveish.” The car pulled up at Mr. Pyke Period’s gate and he got out, arranging for it to pick him up again in half an hour.

Mr. Period received him fretfully in the drawing-room. He was evidently still much perturbed and kept shooting unhappy little glances out of the corners of his eyes. Alleyn could just hear the stutter of Nicola’s typewriter in the study.

“I can’t settle to anything. I couldn’t eat my lunch. It’s all too difficult and disturbing,” said Mr. Period.

“And I’m afraid I’m not going to make it any easier,” Alleyn rejoined. He waited for a moment and decided to fire point-blank. “Mr. Period,” he said, “will you tell me why you wrote two letters of condolence to Miss Cartell, why they are almost exactly the same, and why the first was written and sent to her before either of you had been informed of her brother’s death?”

There was nothing to be learnt from Mr. Period’s face. Shock, guilt, astonishment, lack of comprehension or mere deafness might have caused his jaw to drop and his eyes to glaze. When he did speak it was politely and conventionally. “I beg your pardon? What did you say?”

Alleyn repeated his question. Mr. Period seemed to think it over. After a considerable pause he said flatly: “But I didn’t.”

“You didn’t what?”

“Write twice. The thing’s ridiculous.”

Alleyn drew the two letters from his pocket and laid them before Mr. Period, who screwed his glass in his eye and stooped over them. When he straightened up, his face was the colour of beetroot. “There has been a stupid mistake,” he said.

“I’m afraid I must ask you to explain it.”

“There’s nothing to explain.”

“My dear Period!” Alleyn ejaculated.

“Nothing! My man must have made a nonsense.”

“Your man didn’t, by some act of clairvoyance, anticipate a letter of condolence, and forge a copy and deliver it to a lady before anyone knew she was bereaved?”

“There’s no need to be facetious,” said Mr. Period.

“I couldn’t agree with you more. It’s an extremely serious matter.”

“Very well,” Mr. Period said angrily. “Very well! I ah — I—ah — I had occasion to write to Connie Cartell about something else. Something entirely different and extremely private.”

Astonishingly he broke into a crazy little laugh which seemed immediately to horrify him. He stared wildly at Alleyn. “I — ah — I must have—” He stopped short. Alleyn would have thought it impossible for him to become redder in the face, but he now did so. “The wrong letter,” he said, “was put in the envelope. Obviously.”

“But that doesn’t explain…Wait a bit!” Alleyn exclaimed. “Come!” he said after a moment. “Perhaps sense does begin to dawn after all. Tell me, and I promise I’ll be as discreet as may be, has anybody else of your acquaintance been bereaved of a brother?”

Mr. Period’s eyeglass dropped with a click. “In point of fact,” he said unhappily, “yes.”

“When?”

“It was in yesterday’s — ah! I heard of it yesterday.”

“And wrote?”

Mr. Period inclined his head.

“And the letter was…” Alleyn wondered how on earth his victim’s discomfiture could be reduced, and decided there was nothing much to be done about it. “The letters were identical?” he suggested. “After all, why not? One can’t go on forever inventing consolatory phrases.”

Mr. Period bowed and was silent. Alleyn hurried on. “Do you mind giving me, in confidence, the name of the—” It was difficult to avoid a touch of grotesquery. “The other bereaved sister?”

“Forgive me. I prefer not.”

Remembering there was always Nicola and the Daily Telegraph, Alleyn didn’t press the point.

“Perhaps,” he said, “you wouldn’t mind telling me what the missing letter was about: I mean, the one that you intended for Miss Cartell?”

“Again,” Mr. Period said with miserable dignity, “I regret.” He really looked as if he might cry.

“Presumably it has gone to the other bereaved sister? The wrong letter in the right envelope, as it were?”

Mr. Period momentarily closed his eyes as if overtaken by nausea and said nothing.

“You know,” Alleyn went on very gently, “I have to ask about these things. If they’re irrelevant to the case I can’t tell you how completely and thankfully one puts them out of mind.”

“They are irrelevant,” Mr. Period assured him with vehemence. “Believe me, believe me, they are. Entirely irrelevant! My dear Alleyn — really — I promise you. There now,” Mr. Period concluded with crackpot gaiety, “ ’nuff said! Tell me, my dear fellow, you did have luncheon? I meant to suggest…but this frightful business puts everything out of one’s head. Not, I hope, at our rather baleful little pub?”

He babbled on distractedly. Alleyn listened in the hope of hearing something useful, and, this not being the case, brought him up with a round turn.

He said: “There’s one other thing. I understand that Lady Bantling drove you home last night?”

Mr. Period gaped at him. “But, of course,” he said at last. “Dear Désirée! So kind. Of course! Why?”

“And I believe,” Alleyn plodded on, “that after you had left her she didn’t at once return to Baynesholme, but went into your garden and from there conducted a duologue with Mr. Cartell, who was looking out of his bedroom window. Why didn’t you tell me about this?”

“I don’t — really, I don’t know.”

“But I think you do. You looked through your own bedroom window and asked if anything was the matter.”

“And nothing was!” Mr. Period ejaculated with a kind of pale triumph. “Nothing! She said so! She said—”

“She said: ‘Nothing in the wide world. Go to bed, darling.”

“Precisely. So exuberant, always!”

“Did you hear anything of the conversation?”

“Nothing!” Mr. Period ejaculated. “Nothing at all! But nothing. I simply heard their voices. And in my opinion she was just being naughty and teasing poor old Hal.”

As Mr. Period could not be dislodged from this position Alleyn made his excuses and sought out Nicola in the study.

She was able to find a copy of yesterday’s Telegraph. He read through the obituary notices.

“Look here,” he said, “your employer is in a great taking-on about his correspondence. Did you happen to notice what mail was ready to go out yesterday evening?”

“Yes,” Nicola said. “Two letters.”

“Local addresses?”

“That’s right,” she said uneasily.

“Mind telling me what they were?”

“Well — I mean…”

“All right. Were they to Miss Cartell and Désirée, Lady Bantling?”

“Why ask me,” Nicola said, rather crossly, “if you alread know?”

“I was tricking you, my pretty one, oiled Hawkshaw the detective.”

“Ha-ha, very funny… I suppose,” Nicola sourly remarked.

“Well, only fairly funny.” Alleyn had wandered over to the corner of the room that bore Mr. Period’s illuminated genealogy. “He seems woundily keen on begatteries,” he muttered. “Look at all this. Hung up in a dark spot for modesty’s sake, but framed and hung up, all the same. It’s not an old one. Done at his cost, I’ll be bound.”

“How do you know?”

“If you keep on asking ‘feed’ questions you must expect to be handed the pay-off line. By the paper, gilt and paint.”

“Oh.”

“Where’s Ribblethorpe?”

“Beyond Baynesholme, I think.”

“The Pyke family seems to have come from there.”

“So I’ve been told,” Nicola sighed, “and at some length, poor lamb. He went on and on about it yesterday after luncheon. I think he was working something off.”

“Tell me again about the conversation at lunch.”

Nicola did so and he thanked her.

“I must go,” he said.

“Where to?”

“Oh — up and down in the world seeking whom I may devour. See you later, no doubt.”

As he left the house Alleyn thought: That was all pretty bloody facetious, but the girl makes me feel young. And as he got into the police car he added to himself: But so, after all, does my wife. And that’s what I call being happily married.

“To Baynesholme,” he added, to his driver. On the way there, he sat with his hat cocked forward, noticing that spring was advancing in the countryside and wondering what Désirée Ormsbury, as he remembered her, would look like after all these years. Pretty tough, I daresay, what with one thing and another, he supposed; and when he was shown into her boudoir and she came forward to greet him, he found he had been right.

Désirée was wearing tight pants and an Italian shirt. The shirt was mostly orange and so were her hair and lipstick. Her make-up generally was impressionistic rather than representational and her hands quite desperately haggard.

But when she grinned at him there was the old raffish, disreputable charm he remembered so well, and he thought: “She’s formidable, still.”

“It is you, then,” she said hoarsely. “I wasn’t sure if it was going to be you or your brother — George, was he? — who’d turned into a policeman.”

“I wonder at your remembering either of us.”

“I do, though. But of course George turned into a baronet. You’re Rory, the dashing one.”

“You appall me,” Alleyn said.

“You don’t look all that different. I wish I could say as much for myself. Shall we have a drink?”

“Not me, thank you,” Alleyn said, rather startled. He glanced at a clock: it was twenty to three.

“I’ve only just had lunch,” she explained. “I thought brandy might be rather a thing. Where did you have lunch?” She looked at him. “Wait a moment, will you? Sorry. I won’t be long. Have a smoke.” She added over her shoulder as she walked away: “I’m not trying to escape.”

Alleyn lit a cigarette and looked about him. It was a conventional country-house boudoir, with incongruous dabs of Désirée scattered about it in the form of “dotty” bits of French porcelain and one astonishing picture of a nude sprouting green bay leaves and little flags.

There were photographs of Andrew Bantling and a smooth-looking youngish man whom Alleyn supposed must be Désirée’s third husband. It was a rather colourless photograph but he found himself looking at it with a sense of familiarity. He knew the wide-set eyes were grey rather than blue and that the mouth, when smiling, displayed almost perfect teeth. He knew he had heard the voice: a light baritone, lacking colour. He knew he had at some time encountered this man but he couldn’t remember where or when.

“That’s Bimbo,” said Désirée, returning. “My third. We’ve been married a year.” She carried a loaded tray. “I thought you were probably hungry,” she said, putting it on her desk. “You needn’t feel awkward,” she added. She strolled off and lit a cigarette. “Do have it, for God’s sake, after all my trouble getting it. If I’m arrested, I promise I won’t split on you. Eat up.”

“Since you put it like that,” Alleyn rejoined, “I shall, and very gratefully.” He sat down to chicken aspic and salad, bread, butter, cheese, a bottle of lager and something in an oversized cocktail glass.

“Dry martini,” Désirée said. She herself had a generously equipped brandy glass. She picked up a magazine and disappeared into a sofa. “Is that all right?”

By the smell he supposed it to be made up of nine parts gin to one of French. He therefore tipped it quickly into a vase of flowers on the desk and poured out the lager. The chicken aspic was quite excellent.

“Andrew tells me,” Désirée said, “that you seem to think Hal was murdered.”

“Yes, I do.”

“It appears so unlikely, somehow. Unless somebody did it out of irritation. When we were married, I promise you I felt like it often enough. Still, being rid of him I no longer do — or did. If you follow me.”

“Perfectly,” said Alleyn.

“Andrew says it’s all about a kind of booby-trap, he thinks. Is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“I expected,” Désire said after a pause, “that it would be you asking me the questions.”

“If you fill my mouth with delectable food, how can I?”

“Is it good? I didn’t have any. I never fancy my lunch except for the drinks. Was Hal murdered? Honestly?”

“I think so.”

There was a longish silence and then she began to talk about people they had both known and occasions when they had met. This went on for some time. In her offhand way she managed to convey an implicit familiarity. Presently she came up behind him. He could smell her scent, which was sharp and unfamiliar. He knew she was trying to get him off balance, to make him feel vulnerable, sitting there eating and drinking. He also knew, as certainly as if she had made the grossest of advances, that she was perfectly ready for an unconventional interlude. He wondered where her Bimbo had taken himself off to and if Andrew Bantling was in the house. He continued sedately to eat and drink.

“My Bimbo,” she said as if he had spoken aloud, “is having his bit of afternoon kip. We were latish last night. One of my parties. Quite a pure one, but I suppose you know about that.”

“Yes, it sounded a huge success,” Alleyn said politely. He laid down his knife and fork and got up. “That was delicious,” he said. “Thank you very much, jolly kind of you to think of it.”

“Not at all,” she murmured, coming at him with cigarettes and a lighter and an ineffable look.

“May we sit down?” Alleyn suggested and noticed that she took a chair facing a glare of uncompromising light: she was evidently one of those rare ugly, provocative women who can’t be bothered taking the usual precautions.

“I’ve got to ask you one or two pretty important questions,” Alleyn said. “And the first is this. Have you by any chance had a letter from Mr. Pyke Period? This morning, perhaps?”

She stared at him. “Golly, yes! I’d forgotten all about it. He must be dotty, poor lamb. How did you know?”

Alleyn disregarded this question. “Why dotty?” he asked.

“Judge for yourself.”

She put a hand on his shoulder, leant across him and pulled out a drawer in her desk, taking her time about it. “Here it is,” she said and dropped a letter in front of him. “Go on,” she said. “Read it.”

It was written in Mr. Period’s old-fashioned hand, on his own letter paper.

“Have you any idea,” Alleyn said, “what he’s driving at?”

“Not a notion. He dined here last night and was normal.”

“Would you have expected another sort of letter from him?”

“Another sort? What sort? Oh! I see what you mean. About Ormsbury, poor brute? He’s dead, you know.”

“Yes.”

“With P.P.’s passion for condolences it would have been more likely. You mean he’s done the wrong thing? So, who was meant to have this one?”

“May I at all events keep it?”

“Do if you want to.”

Alleyn pocketed the letter. “I’d better say at once that you may have been the last person to speak to Harold Cartell, not excepting his murderer.”

She had a cigarette ready in her mouth and the flame from the lighter didn’t waver until she drew on it,

“How do you make that out?” she asked easily. “Oh, I know. Somebody’s told you about the balcony scene. Who? Andrew, I suppose, or his girl. Or P.P., of course. He cut in on it from his window.”

“So you had a brace of Romeos in reverse?”

“Like hell I did. Both bald, and me, if we face it, not quite the dewy job either.”

Alleyn found himself at once relishing this speech and knowing that she had intended him to have exactly that reaction.

“The dewy jobs,” he said, “have their limitations.”

“Whereas for me,” Désirée said, suddenly overdoing it, “the sky’s the limit. Did you know that?”

He decided to disregard this and pressed on. “Why,” he asked, “having deposited Mr. Period at his garden gate, did you leave the car, cross the ditch and serenade Mr. Cartell?”

“I saw him at his window and thought it would be fun.”

“What did you say?”

“I think I said: ‘But soft, what light from yonder window breaks?’ ”

“And after that?”

“I really don’t remember. I pulled his leg a bit.”

“Did you tell him you were on the warpath?”

There was a fractional pause before she said: “Well, I must say P.P. has sharp ears for an elderly gent. Yes, I did. It meant nothing.”

“And did you tell him to watch his step?”

“Why,” asked Désirée, “don’t we just let you tell me what I said and leave it at that?”

“Did you tackle him about that boy of yours?”

“All right,” she said, “yes, I did!” And then: “They didn’t tell you? Andy and the girl? Have you needled it out of them, you cunning fellow?”

“I’m afraid,” Alleyn prevaricated, “they were too far up the lane and much too concerned with each other to be reliable witnesses.”

“So P.P. — ” She leant forward and touched him. “Look,” she said, “I honestly don’t remember what I said to Hal. I’d had one or two little drinks and was a morsel high.” She waited for a moment and then, with a sharpness that she hadn’t exhibited before, said: “If it was a booby-trap, I hadn’t a chance to set it, had I? Not in full view of those two lovebirds.”

“Who told you about the booby-trap?”

“P.P. told Andy, and Andy told me.…And I drove straight here, to Baynesholme, arriving at twenty-five to twelve. The first couple got back soon afterwards. From then on, I was under the closest imaginable observation. Isn’t that what one calls a watertight alibi?”

“’I shall be glad,” Alleyn said, “to have it confirmed. How do you know you got back at 11:35?”

“The clock in the hall. I was watching the time because of the treasure hunt.”

“Who won?”

“Need you ask? The Moppett and her bully. They probably cheated in some way.”

“Really? How, do you suppose?”

“They heard us plotting about the clues in the afternoon. The last one led back to the loo tank in the downstairs cloakroom.”

“Here?”

“That’s right. Most of the others finally guessed it, but they were too late. Andrew and Nicola didn’t even try, I imagine.”

“Any corroborative evidence, do you remember?”

“Of my alibi?”

“Of your alibi,” Alleyn agreed sedately.

“I don’t know. I think I called out something to Bimbo. He might remember.”

“So he might.… About last night’s serenade to your second husband: did you introduce the subject of your son’s inheritance?”

She burst out laughing; she had a loud, formidable laugh like a female Duke of Wellington. “Do you know,” she said, “I believe I did. Something of the sort. Anything to get a rise.”

“He called on you yesterday afternoon, didn’t he?”

“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. “About Flash Len and a car. He was in a great taking-on, poor pet.”

“And on that occasion,” Alleyn persisted, “did you introduce the subject of the inheritance?”

“Did we? Yes, so we did. I told Hal I thought he was behaving jolly shabbily, which was no more than God’s truth.”

“What was his reaction?”

“He was too fussed to take proper notice. He just fumed away about the car game.…Your spies have been busy,” she added. “Am I allowed to ask who told you? Wait a bit, though. It must have been Sergeant Noakes. What fun for him.”

“Why was Cartell so set against the picture-gallery idea?”

“My dear, because he was what he was. Fuddy-duddy-plus. It’s a bore, because he’s Andy’s guardian.”

“Any other trustees?”

“Yes. P.P.”

“What does he think?”

“He thinks Andy might grow a beard and turn beat, which he doesn’t dig. Still, I can manage my P.P.…Boo wouldn’t have minded.”

“Boo?”

“Bobo Bantling. My first. Andy’s papa. You knew Boo. Don’t be so stuffy.”

Alleyn, who did in fact remember this singularly ineffectual peer, made no reply.

“And I may add,” Lady Bantiing said, apparently as an afterthought, “Bimbo considered it a jolly good bet. And he’s got a flair for that sort of thing, Bimbo has. As a matter of fact Bimbo offered—” She broke off and seemed to cock an ear. Alleyn had already heard steps in the hall. “Here, I do believe, he is!” Désirée exclaimed and called out loudly: “Bimbo!”

“Hullo!” said a distant voice, rather crossly.

“Come in here, darling.”

The door opened and Bimbo Dodds came in. Alleyn now remembered where he had seen him.

The recognition, Alleyn felt sure, was mutual, though Bimbo gave no sign of this. They had last met on the occasion of a singularly disreputable turn-up in a small but esoteric night club. There had been a stabbing, subsequent revelations involving a person of consequence, and a general damping-down process ending in a scantily publicized conviction. Benedict Arthur Dodds, Alleyn recollected, had been one of a group of fashionable gentlemen who had an undercover financial interest in the club which had come to an abrupt and discreditable end and an almost immediate reincarnation under another name. Bimbo had appeared briefly in court, stared at coldly by the magistrate, and was lucky to escape the headlines. At the time, Alleyn recollected, Bimbo was stated to be an undischarged bankrupt. It was before his marriage to Désirée.

She introduced them. Bimbo, who had the slightly mottled complexion of a man who has slept heavily in the afternoon, nodded warily and glanced at the tray. His right hand was neatly bandaged and he did not offer it to Alleyn.

“The Super and I, darling,” Désirée said, “are boy-and-girl chums. He was starving and I’ve given him a snack. He’s jolly famous nowadays, so isn’t it nice to have him grilling us?”

“Oh, really?” said Bimbo. “Ha-ha. Yes.”

“You must answer all his questions very carefully because it seems as if Hal was murdered. Imagine!”

Interpreting this speech to be in the nature of a general warning, Alleyn said: “I wonder if I may have a word with you, Mr. Dodds.” And to Désirée: “Thank you so much for my delicious luncheon-without-prejudice.”

For a split second she looked irritated, and then she said: “Not a bit. Do I gather that you want to go into a huddle with my husband?”

“Just a word,” Alleyn said equably, “if we may. Perhaps somewhere else…?”

“Not at all. I’ll go and snip the deadheads off roses- except that there aren’t any roses and it’s the wrong time of the year.”

“Perhaps you could get on with your embroidery,” said Alleyn, and had the satisfaction of seeing her blink.

“Suppose,” she suggested, “that you adjourn to Bimbo’s study. Why not?”

“Why not?” Bimbo echoed, without cordiality.

As Alleyn passed her on his way out, she looked full in his face. It was impossible to interpret her expression, but he’d have taken a long bet that she was worried.

Bimbo’s study turned out to be the usual sporting-print job with inherited classics on the shelves, together with one or two paperbacks looking like Long Acre in its more dubious reaches. Bimbo, whose manner was huffy and remote, said: “This is a very unpleasant sort of thing to happen.”

“Yes, isn’t it?”

“Anything we can do, of course.”

“Thank you very much. There are one or two points,” Alleyn said without refurbishing the stock phrases, “that I’d like to clear up. It’s simply a matter of elimination, as I’m sure you’ll understand.”

“Naturally,” said Bimbo.

“Well, then. You’ll have heard that Mr. Cartell’s body was found in a trench that has been dug in Green Lane, the lane that runs past Mr. Period’s garden. Did you drive down Green Lane at any time last evening?”

“Ah—” Bimbo said. “Ah — let me think. Yes, I did. When going round the clues.”

He paused while Alleyn reflected that this was a fair enough description of his own preoccupation.

“The clues for the treasure hunt?” he said. “When?”

“That’s right. Oh, I don’t know. About half-past ten. Might be later. I simply drove over the territory to see how they were all getting on.”

“Yes, I see… Was there anybody in the lane?”

“Actually,” Bimbo said casually, “I don’t remember. Or do I? No, there wasn’t.”

“Did you get out of the car?”

“Did I? I believe I did. Yes. I checked to make sure the last clue was still there.”

“If you don’t know what to do, think it over in the loo.”

“Quite. Was it still there this morning?” Bimbo asked sharply.

“When did you get back?”

“Here? I don’t know exactly.”

“Before Lady Bantling, for instance?”

“Oh, yes. She drove old Period home. That was later. I mean, it was while I was out. I mean, we were both out, but I got home first.”

“You saw her come in?”

“I really don’t remember that I actually saw her. I heard her, I think. I was looking round the ballroom to see everything was all right.”

“Any idea of the time?”

“I’m afraid I really wasn’t keeping a stopwatch on our movements. It was before twelve, because they were all meant to be back by midnight.”

“Yes, I see. And did you leave the house again?”

“I did not.”

“I believe there was some sort of dogfight.”

“My God, yes! Oh, I see what you mean. I went out with the others to the terrace and dealt with it. That ghastly bitch—” Here Bimbo made one or two extremely raw comments upon Pixie.

“She bit you, perhaps?”

“She certainly did,” Bimbo said, nursing his hand.

“Very professional bandage.”

“I had to get the doctor.”

“After the party?”

“That’s right. I fixed it up myself at the time, but it came unstuck.”

“You tied it up?”

Bimbo stared at him. “I did. I went to a bathroom, where there’s a first-aid cupboard, and stuck a bandage on. Temporarily.”

“How long did this take you, do you know?”

“I don’t know. How the hell should I?”

“Well — at a guess.”

“Quite a time. It kept oozing out, but in the end I fixed it. Quite a time, really. I should think all of twenty minutes before I rejoined the party. Or more. Some bloody mongrel tore my trousers and I had to change.”

“Maddening for you,” Alleyn said sympathetically. “Tell me: you are a member of the Hacienda Club?”

Bimbo went very still. Presently he said: “I simply cannot conceive what that has to do with anything at issue.”

“It has, though,” Alleyn said cheerfully. “I just wondered, you see, whether you’d ever run into Leonard Leiss at the Hacienda. His name’s on their list.”

“I certainly have not,” Bimbo said. He moved away. Alleyn wondered whether he was lying.

“I’m no longer a member, and I’ve never seen Leiss, to my knowledge,” Bimbo said, “until yesterday. He got himself asked to our party. In my opinion he’s the rock-bottom. A frightful person.”

“Right. So that settles that. Now, about the business of your stepson and the Grantham Gallery.”

He gave Bimbo time to register the surprise that this change in tactics produced. It was marked by a very slight widening of the eyes and recourse to a cigarette case. Alleyn sometimes wondered how much the cigarette-smoking person scored over an abstainer when it came to police investigations.

“Oh, that!” Bimbo said. “Yes, well, I must say I think it’s quite a sound idea.”

“You talked it over with Bantling?”

“Yes, I did. We went into it pretty thoroughly. I’m all for it.”

“To the extent of taking shares in it yourself?”

Bimbo said airily: “Even that. Other things being equal.”

“What other things?”

“Well — fuller inquiries and all that.”

“And the money of course?”

“Of course.”

“Have you got it?” Alleyn asked calmly.

“I must say!” Bimbo ejaculated.

“In police inquiries,” Alleyn said, “no question is impertinent, I’m afraid.”

“And I’m afraid I disagree with you.”

“Would you mind telling me if you are still an undischarged bankrupt?”

“I mind very much, but the answer is no. The whole thing was cleared up a year ago.”

“That would be at the time of your marriage, I think?”

Bimbo turned scarlet and said not a word.

“Still,” Alleyn went on after a slight pause, “I suppose the Grantham Gallery plan will go forward now, don’t you?”

“I’ve no idea.”

“No reason why it shouldn’t, one imagines, unless Mr. Period, who’s a trustee, objects.”

“In any case it doesn’t arise.”

“No?”

“I mean it’s got nothing to do with this ghastly business.”

“Oh, I see. Well, now,” Alleyn said briskly, “I fancy that’s about all. Except that I ought to ask you if there’s anything in the wide world you can think of that could be of help to us.”

“Having no idea of the circumstances I can hardly be expected to oblige,” Bimbo said with a short laugh.

“Mr. Cartell’s body was found in the open drain outside Mr. Period’s house. He had been murdered. That,” Alleyn lied, “is about all anyone knows.”

“How had he been murdered?”

“Hit on the head, it appears, and smothered.”

“Poor old devil,” said Bimbo. He stared absently at his cigarette. “Look!” he said. “Nobody likes to talk wildly about a thing like this. I mean it just won’t do to put a wrong construction on what may be a perfectly insignificant detail, will it?”

“It’s our job to forget insignificant details.”

“Yes, I know. Of course. All the same—”

“Mr. Dodds, I really think I can promise you I won’t go galloping down a false trail with blinkers over my eyes.”

Bimbo smiled. “O.K.,” he said. “Fair enough. No doubt I’m behaving like the original Silly Suspect or something. It’s just that, when it comes to the point, one doesn’t exactly fancy trotting out something that may turn out to be — well—”

“Incriminating?”

“Well, exactly. Mind you, in principle, I’m for weighing-in with the police. We bellyache about them freely enough but we expect them to protect us. Of course everybody doesn’t see it like that.”

“Not everybody.”

“No. And anyway with all the rot-gut that the longhaired gentry talk about understanding the thugs, it’s up to the other people to show the flag.”

Disregarding a certain nausea in the region of his midriff, Alleyn said: “Quite.”

Bimbo turned away to the window and seemed to be contemplating the landscape. Perhaps because of this, his voice had taken on a different perspective.

“Personally,” Alleyn heard him say, “I’m in favour of capital punishment.”

Alleyn, who was one of an extremely small minority among his brother-officers, said: “Ah, yes?”

“Anyway, that’s nothing to do with the point at issue,” Bimbo said, turning back into the room. “I don’t know why I launched out like this.”

“We can forget it.”

“Yes, of course.”

“You were going to tell me…?”

“Yes, I was. It’s about this bloody fellow Leiss and his ghastly girl. They hung on to the bitter end of the party, of course. I’ve never seen anybody drink more or show it less, I’ll say that for them. Well, the last car was leaving — except his bit of wreckage — and it was about two o’clock. I thought I’d give them the hint. I collected his revolting overcoat and went to hunt them out. I couldn’t find them at first, but I finally ran them down in my study, here, where they had settled in with a bottle of champagne. They were on the sofa with their backs to the door and didn’t hear me come in. They were pretty well bogged down in an advanced necking party. He was talking. I heard the end of the sentence.” Bimbo stopped and frowned at his cigarette. “Of course, it may not mean a damn’ thing.” He looked at Alleyn, who said nothing.

“Well, for what it’s worth,” Bimbo went on. “He said: ‘And that disposes of Mr. Harold Cartell for keeps.’ And she said something like: ‘When do you think they’ll find it?’ and he said: ‘In the morning, probably. Not windy, are you? For Christ’s sake, keep your head: we’re in the clear.’ ”