Hand in Glove

CHAPTER SIX Interlude

With this piece of reportage, spurious or not as the case might prove to be, it appeared that Bimbo had reached saturation point as a useful witness. He had nothing more to offer. After noticing that a good deal of unopened mail lay on the desk, including several bills and a letter from a solicitor, addressed to Benedict Arthur Dodds, Alleyn secured Bimbo’s uneasy offer to sign a statement and took his leave.

“Please don’t move,” Alleyn said politely, “I can find my way out.” Before Bimbo could put himself in motion, Alleyn had gone out and shut the study door behind him.

In the hall, not altogether to his surprise, he found Désirée. She was, if anything, a little wilder in her general appearance, and Alleyn wondered if this was to be attributed to another tot of brandy. But in all other respects she seemed to be more or less herself.

“Hullo,” she said. “I’ve been waiting for you. There’s a sort of crise.”

“What sort?”

“It may not be a crise at all, but I thought I’d better tall you. I really feel a bit awkward about it. I seem to have made a clanger, showing you P.P.’s funny letter. It wasn’t meant for me.”

“Who was it meant for?”

“He wouldn’t say. He’s just rung up in a frightful taking-on, asking me to throw it on the fire and forget about it. He went on at great length, talking about his grand ancestors and I don’t know what else.”

“You didn’t tell him I’d seen the letter?”

Désirée looked fixedly at him. “No,” she said. “I didn’t, but I felt like a housemaid who’s broken a cup. Poor P.P. What can it all be about? He is so fussed — you can’t imagine.”

“Never mind,” Alleyn said, “I daresay it’s only his overdeveloped social sense.”

“Well, I know. All the same…” She put her hand on his arm. “Rory,” she said, “if you don’t awfully mind, don’t tell him I gave you the letter. He’d think me such a sweep.”

At that moment Alleyn liked her very much. “I won’t tell him,” he said carefully, “unless I have to. And for your part, I’ll be obliged if you don’t tell him, either.”

“I’m not likely to, am I? And anyway, I don’t quite see why the promises about this letter should all be on my side.”

“It may be important.”

“All right, but I can’t think how. You’ve got it. Are you going to use it in some way?”

“Not if it’s irrelevant.”

“I suppose it’s no good asking you to give it back to me. No, I can see it’s not.”

“It isn’t, really, Désirée,” Alleyn said, using her name for the first time. “Not till I make quite sure it’s of no account. I’m sorry.”

“What a common sort of job you’ve got. I can’t think how you do it.” She gave one of her harsh barks of laughter.

He looked at her for a moment. “I expect that was a very clever thing to say,” he said. “But I’m afraid it makes no difference. Good-bye. Thank you again for my lunch.”

When he was in the car he said: “To Ribblethorpe. It’s about five miles, I think. I want to go to the parish church.”

It was a pleasant drive through burgeoning lanes. There were snowdrops in the hedgerows and a general air of freshness and simplicity. Désirée’s final observation stuck in his gullet.

Ribblethorpe was a tiny village. They drove past a row of cottages and a shop-post-office and came to a pleasant if not distinguished church with a big shabby parsonage beyond it.

Alleyn walked through the graveyard and very soon found a Victorian headstone to frances ann patricia, infant daughter of alfred molyneux piers period esquire and lady frances mary julia, his wife. she is not dead but sleepeth. Reflecting on the ambiguity of the quotation, Alleyn moved away and had not long to search before he found carved armorial bearings exactly similar to those in Mr. Period’s study. These adorned the grave of Lord Percival Francis Pykke, who died in 1701 and had conferred sundry and noble benefits upon this parish. The name recurred pretty regularly up and down the graveyard from Jacobean times onward. When he went into the church it was the same story. Armorial fish, brasses and tablets all confirmed the eminence of innumerable Pykes.

Alleyn was in luck. The baptismal register was not locked away in the vestry but chained to a carved desk, hard by the font. In the chancel a lady wearing an apron and housemaid’s gloves was polishing brasses. Her hat, an elderly toque, had been, for greater ease, lifted up on her head — giving her a faint air of recklessness. He approached her.

“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “if I may look in the baptismal register? I’m doing a bit of extremely amateurish research. I’ll be very careful.”

“Oh, rather!” said the lady, jollily. “Do. My husband’s over at Ribblethorpe-Parva with the Mothers, or he’d help like a shot. I don’t know if I—”

“Thank you so much but it’s really quite a simple job,” Alleyn said hastily. “Just a family thing, you know.”

“We haven’t been here long: only three months, so we’re not up in the antiquities.” The Rector’s wife, as Alleyn supposed she must be, gave a final buffet with her polisher, tossed her head at her work in a jocular manner, bobbed to the altar and made for the vestry. “I’m Mrs. Nicholls,” she said. “My husband followed dear old Father Forsdyke. You’ll find all the entries pretty erratic,” she added over her shoulder. “Father Forsdyke was a saint but as vague as could be. Over ninety when he died, rest his soul.” She disappeared. Somehow, she reminded him of Connie Cartell.

The register was bound in vellum and bore the Royal Arms on its cover. Its pages were divided into columns headed When Baptised, Child’s Christian Name, Parents’ Names, Abode, Quality, Trade or Profession and By Whom Performed. It had been opened at July 1874.

How old was Mr. Pyke Period? Fifty-eight? Over sixty? Difficult to say. Alleyn started his search at the first entry in 1895. In that year the late Mr. Forsdyke was already at the helm and, although presumably not much over thirty, pretty far advanced in absence-of-mind. There was every sort of mistake and erasure, Mr. Forsdyke madly representing himself by turns as “Officiating Priest,” “Infant,” “Godmother,” and in one entry as Abode. These slips were sometimes corrected by himself, sometimes by another person and sometimes not at all. In several places, the sponsors appeared under Quality, Trade or Profession, in others they were crammed in with the parents. In one respect, however, all was consistency. Where a male Pyke was in question the Quality was invariably “Gentleman.”

At the bottom of a particularly wild page in the year 1897, Alleyn found what he wanted. Here on May 7th (altered to 5th) was baptised Frances Ann Patricia, daughter of Alfred Molyneux Piers Period and Lady Frances Mary Julia Period née Pyke, with a huddle of amended sponsors. In another hand, crammed in under Frances Ann Patricia, a second infant had been entered: Percival Pyke. Brackets had been added, enclosing the word “Twins.”

It would seem that, on the occasion of his baptism, Mr. Pyke Period had fallen a victim to the Rector’s peculiarity and had been temporarily neglected for his twin sister who, Alleyn remembered from her headstone, had died in infancy.

He spent a long time over this additional entry, using a strong pocket lens. He would have been very glad to remove the page and give it the full laboratory treatment. As it was he could see that a fine-pointed steel nib had been used and he noted that such another nib was rusting in the pen on the desk which also carried an old-fashioned inkpot. The writing was in a copperplate style, without character and rather laborious.

Praying that Mrs. Nicholls was engaged in further activities in the vestry, Alleyn slipped out to the car and took a small phial from his homicide kit. Back at the font — and hearing Mrs. Nicholls, who was an insecure mezzo, distantly proclaiming that she ploughed the fields and scattered — he let fall a drop from the phial on the relevant spot. The result was not as conclusive as the laboratory test would have been, but he would have taken long odds that the addition had been made at a different time from the main entry. Trusting that if anybody looked at this page they would conclude that some sentimentalist had let fall a tear over the infant in question, Alleyn shut the register.

The Rector’s wife returned without her apron and with her hat adjusted. “Any luck?” she asked.

“Thank you,” Alleyn said. “Yes, I think so. I find these old registers quite fascinating. The same names recurring through the years — it gives one such a feeling of continuity: the quiet life of the countryside. You seem to have had a steady progression of Pykes.”

“One of the oldest families, they were,” said the Rector’s wife. “Great people in their day by all accounts.”

“Have they disappeared?”

“Oh, yes. A long time ago. I think their manor house was burnt down in Victorian times and I suppose they moved away. At all events the family died out. There’s a Mr. Period over at Little Codling, who I believe was related, but I’ve been told he’s the last. Rather sad.”

“Yes, indeed,” Alleyn said.

He thanked her again and said he was sorry to have bothered her.

“No bother to me,” she said. “As a matter of fact we had someone else in, searching the register, a few weeks ago. A lawyer I think he was. Something to do with a client, I daresay.”

“Really? I wonder,” Alleyn improvised, “if it was my cousin.” He summoned the memory of Mr. Cartell, dreadfully blurred with mud. “Elderly? Slight? Baldish with a big nose? Rather pedantic old chap?”

“I believe he was. Yes, that exactly describes him. Fancy!”

“He’s stolen a march on me,” Alleyn said. “We’re amusing ourselves hunting up the family curiosities.” He put something in the church maintenance box and took his leave. As he left the church a deafening rumpus in the lane announced the approach of an antique motor car. It slowed down. The driver looked with great interest at Alleyn and the police car. He then accelerated and rattled off down the lane. It was Mr. Copper in the Bloodbath.

“If there’s one thing I fancy more than another, Mrs. Mitchell,” said Inspector Fox, laying down his knife and fork, “it’s a cut of cold lamb, potato salad and a taste of cucumber relish. If I may say so, your cucumber relish is something particular. I’m very much obliged to you. Delicious.”

“Welcome, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Mitchell. “I’ve got a nephew in the Force, Mr. Fox, and from what he says it’s the irregular meals that tells in the end. Worse than the feet, even, my nephew says; and his are a treat, believe you me. Soft corns! Well! Like red-hot coals, my nephew says.”

Alfred cleared his throat. “Occupational disabilities!” he generalized. “They happen to the best of us, Mrs. M.”

“That’s right. Look at my varicose veins. I don’t mean literally,” Mrs. Mitchell added with a jolly laugh, in which Fox joined.

“Well, now,” he said. “I mustn’t stay here gossiping all the afternoon or I’ll have the Superintendent on my tracks.”

“Here we are, acting as pleasant as you please,” Mrs. Mitchell observed, “and all the while there’s this wicked business hanging over our heads. You know? In a way I can’t credit it.”

“Naturally enough, Mrs. M.,” Alfred pointed out. “Following, as we do, the even tenor of our ways, the concept of violence is not easily assimilated. Mr. Fox appreciates the point of view, I feel sure.”

“Very understandable.…I suppose,” Fox suggested, “you might say the household had ticked over as comfortably as possible ever since the two gentlemen decided to join forces.”

There was a brief silence broken by Mrs. Mitchell. “In a manner of speaking, you might,” she concluded, “although there have been — well …”

“Exterior influences,” Alfred said, remotely.

“Well, exactly, Mr. Belt.”

“Such as?” Fox suggested.

“Since you ask me, Mr. Fox, such as the dog and the Arrangement. And the connections,” Mrs. Mitchell added.

“Miss Mary Ralston, for instance?”

“You took the words out of my mouth.”

“We mustn’t,” Alfred intervened, “give too strong an impression, Mrs. M.”

“Well, I daresay we mustn’t, but you have to face up to it. The dog is an animal of disgusting habits, and that young lady’s been nothing but a menace ever since the Arrangement was agreed upon. You’ve said it yourself, Mr. Belt, over and over again.”

“A bit wild, I take it,” Fox ventured.

“Blood,” Mrs. Mitchell said sombrely, “will tell. Out of an Orphanage — and why there, who knows?”

“As Mr. Cartell himself realized,” Alfred said. “I heard him make the observation last evening, though he didn’t frame it in those particular terms.”

“Last evening? Really? Cigarette, Mrs. Mitchell?”

“Thank you, Mr. Fox.” Alfred and Mrs. Mitchell exchanged a glance. A bell rang.

“Excuse me,” Alfred said. “The study.” He went out. Fox, gazing benignly upon Mrs. Mitchell, wondered if he detected a certain easing~up in her manner.

“Mr. Belt,” she said, “is very much put about by all this. He don’t show his feelings, but you can tell.”

“Very natural,” Fox said. “So Mr. Cartell didn’t find himself altogether comfortable about Miss Ralston?” he hinted.

“It couldn’t be expected he should take to her. A girl of that type calling him ‘Uncle,’ and all. As for our gentleman — well!”

“I can imagine,” Fox said, cozily. “Asking for trouble.” He beamed at her. “So there were words?” he said. “Well, bound to be, when you look at the situation, but I daresay they didn’t amount to much, the deceased gentleman being of such an easy-going nature, from all accounts.”

“I’m sure I don’t know who gave you that idea, Inspector,” Mrs. Mitchell ejaculated. “I’d never have called him that, never. Real old bachelor and a lawyer into the bargain. Speak no ill, of course, but speak as you find all the same. Take last evening. There was all this trouble over our gentleman’s cigarette case.”

Fox allowed her to tell him at great length about the cigarette case.

“…So,” Mrs. Mitchell said after some minutes, “Mr. Cartell goes over to the other house, and by all accounts (though that Trudi, being a foreigner, can’t make herself as clear as we would have wished) tackles Miss Moppett and as good as threatens her with the police. Hand back the case and give up her fancyboy Or Else. Accordin’ to Trudi, who dropped in last evening.”

Fox made clucky noises. Alfred returned to fetch his cap.

“Bloody dog’s loose again,” he said angrily. “Bit through her lead. Now, I’m told I’ve got to find her because of complaints in the village.”

“What will he do with her?” Mrs. Mitchell wondered.

“I know what I’d do with her,” Alfred said viciously. “I’d gas her. Well, if I don’t see you again, Mr. Fox…”

Fox remarked that he had no doubt that they would meet.

When Alfred had gone Mrs. Mitchell said: “Mr. Belt feels strongly on the subject. I don’t like to think of destroying the dog, I must say. I wonder if my sister would like her for the kiddies. Of course with her out of the way and the other matter settled, it will seem more like old times.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “That sounds terrible. Don’t take me up wrong, Mr. Fox, but we was all very comfortably situated before and therefore sorry to contemplate making a change.”

“Were you thinking of it? Giving notice?”

“Mr. Belt was. Definitely. Though reluctant to do so, being he’s stayed all his working life with our gentleman. However, he spoke to Mr. Period on the subject, and the outcome was promising.”

Mrs. Mitchell enlarged upon this theme at some length. “Which was a relief to all concerned,” she ended, “seeing we are in other respects well situated, and the social background all that you could fancy. Tonight, for instance, there’s the Church Social, which we both attend regular and will in spite of everything. But after what passed between him and Mr. Cartell over the missing article, nothing else could be expected. Mr. Belt,” Mrs. Mitchell added, “is a man who doesn’t forget. Not a thing of that sort. During the war,” she added obscurely, “he was in the signalling.”

The back doorbell rang and Mrs. Mitchell attended it. Fox could hear, but not distinguish, a conversation in which a male voice played the predominant part. He strolled to an advantageous position in time to hear Mrs. Mitchell say, “Fancy! I wonder why!” and to see a man in a shabby suit who said: “Your guess is as good as mine. Well, I’ll be on my way.”

Fox returned to his chair and Mrs. Mitchell re-entered.

“Mr. Copper from the garage,” she said. “To inquire about the Church Social. He saw your Superintendent coming out of Ribblethorpe Church. I wonder why.”

Fox said Superintendent Alleyn was much interested in old buildings, and, with the inner calm that characterized all his proceedings, took his leave and went to the Little Codling constabulary. Here he found Superintendent Williams with his wife’s vacuum cleaner. “Not the Yard job,” Williams said cheerfully, “but it’s got a baby nozzle and should do.”

They gave Leonard Leiss’s dinner suit and overcoat a very thorough going-over, extracting soil from the excavations and enough of Mr. Period’s Turkish cigarette tobacco to satisfy, as Fox put it, a blind juryman in a total eclipse.

They paid particular attention to Leonard’s wash-leather gloves, which were, as Nicola had suggested, on the dainty side.

“Soiled,” Williams pointed out, “but he didn’t lift any planks with those on his hands.” Fox wrote up his notes and, in a reminiscent mood, drank several cups of strong tea with the Superintendent and Sergeant Noakes, who was then dispatched to return the garments to their owner.

At five o’clock Alleyn arrived in the police car and they all drove to the mortuary at Rimble. It was behind the police station and had rambling roses trained up its concrete walls. Here they found Sir James Curtis, the Home Office Pathologist, far enough on with his autopsy on Harold Cartell’s body to be able to confirm Alleyn’s tentative diagnosis. The cranial injuries were consistent with a blow from the plank. The remaining multiple injuries were caused by the drainpipe falling on the body and ramming it into the mud. The actual cause of death had been suffocation. Dr. Elkington was about to leave and they all stood looking down at what was left of Mr. Cartell. The face was now cleaned. A knowledgeable, faintly supercilious, expression lay about the mouth and brows.

In an adjoining shed, Williams had found temporary storage for the planks, the lantern and the stanchion. Here, Detective-Sergeants Thompson and Bailey were to be found, having taken further and more extensive photographs.

“I’m a bit of a camera-fiend myself and they’ve been using my darkroom,” said Williams. “We’re getting the workmen to bring the drainpipe along in their crane-truck. Noakes’ll come back with them and keep an eye on it, but these chaps of yours tell me they got what they wanted on the spot.”

Alleyn made the appropriate compliments, which were genuine, indeed. Williams was the sort of colleague that visiting Superintendents yearn after, and Alleyn told him so.

Bailey, a man of few words, great devotion and mulish disposition, indicated the two foot-planks which had been laid across packing cases, underside up.

“Hairs,” he said. “Three. Consistent with deceased’s.”

“Good.”

“There’s another thing.” Bailey jerked his finger at a piece of microphotographic film and a print laid out under glass on an improvised bench. “The print brings it up. Still wet, but you can make it out. Just.”

The planks were muddy where they had dug into the walls of the ditch, but at the edges and ten inches from the ends of microphotograph showed confused traces. Alleyn spent some time over them.

“Yes,” he said. “Gloved hands, I don’t mind betting. Big, heavy gloves.” He looked up at Bailey. “It’s a rough undersurface. If you can find as much leather as would go in the eye of a needle we’re not home and dry but we may be in sight. Which way were they carried here?”

“Underside up,” Bailey said.

“Right. Well, you can but try.”

“I have, Mr. Alleyn. Can again.”

“Do,” said Alleyn. He was going over the undersurface of the planks with his lens. “Tweezers,” he said.

Bailey put a pair in his hand and fetched a sheet of paper.

“Have a go at these,” Alleyn said and dropped two minute specks on the paper. “They may be damn’-all but it looks as if they might have rubbed off the seam of a heavy glove. Not wash leather, by the way. Strong hide — and … Look here.”

He had found another fragment. “String,” he said. “Heavy leather and string.”

“You got to have the eyes for it,” Detective-Sergeant Thompson said to nobody in particular.

During the brief silence that followed this pronouncement, the unmistakable racket of a souped-up engine made itself heard.

“That,” Mr. Fox observed, “sounds like young Mr. Leiss’s sports car.”

“Stopping,” Williams observed.

“Come on, Fox,” Alleyn said. They went out to the gate. It was indeed Mr. Leiss’s sports car, but Mr. Leiss was not at the wheel. The car screamed to a halt, leaving a trail of water from its radiator. Moppett, wearing a leather coat and jeans, was leaning out of the driving window.

With allowances for her make-up, which contrived to look both dirty and extreme, Alleyn would have thought she was pale. Her manner was less assured than it had been: indeed, she seemed to be in something of an emotional predicament.

“Oh, good,” she said. “They told me you might be here. Sorry to bother you.”

“Not at all,” Alleyn said. Moppett’s fingers, over-fleshed, sketchily nail-painted and stained with nicotine, moved restlessly on the driving wheel.

“It’s like this,” she said. “The local cop’s just brought Lenny’s things back: the overcoat and dinner suit.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Well, the thing is, his gloves are missing.”

Alleyn glanced at Fox.

“I beg your pardon, Miss Ralston,” Fox said, “but I saw to the parcel myself. The gloves were returned. Cream wash leather, size seven.”

“I don’t mean those,” Moppett said. “I mean his driving gloves. They’re heavy leather ones with string backs. I ought to know. I gave them to him.”

“Suppose,” Alleyn suggested, “you park your car and we get this sorted out.”

“I don’t want to go in there,” Moppett said with a sidelong look at the mortuary. “That’s the dead-place, isn’t it?”

“We’ll use the Station,” Alleyn said, and to that small yellowwood office she was taken. The window was open. From a neighbouring garden came an insistent chatteration of birdsong and the smell of earth and violets. Fox shut a side door that led into the yard. Moppett sat down.

“Mind if I smoke?” she said.

Alleyn gave her a cigarette. She kept her hands in her pockets while he lit it. She then began to talk rapidly in a voice that was pitched above its natural level.

“I can’t be long. Lennie thinks I’m dropping the car at the garage. It’s sprung a leak,” she added unnecessarily, “in its waterworks. He’d be livid if he knew I was here. He’s livid anyway about the gloves. He swears they were in his overcoat pocket.”

Alleyn said: “They were not there when we collected the coat. Did he have them last night, do you know?”

“He didn’t wear them. He wore his other ones. He’s jolly fussy about his gloves,” said Moppett. “I tell him Freud would have had something to say about it. And now I suppose I’ll get the rocket.”

“Why?”

“Well, because of yesterday afternoon. When we were at Baynesholme. We changed cars,” Moppett said, without herself changing colour, “and I collected his overcoat from the car he decided not to buy. He says the gloves were in the pocket of the coat.”

“What did you do with the coat?”

“That’s just what I can’t remember. We drove back to Auntie Con’s to dine and change for the party, and our things were still in the car. His overcoat and mine. I suppose I bunged the lot out while he went off to buy cigarettes.”

“You don’t remember where you put the overcoat?”

“I should think I just dumped it in the car. I usually do.”

“Mr. Leiss’s coat was in his wardrobe this morning.”

“That’s right. Trudi put it there, I expect. She’s got a letch for Lennie, that girl. Perhaps she pinched his gloves. And now I come to think of it,” Moppett said, “I wouldn’t mind betting she did.”

“Did you at any time wear the gloves yourself?”

After a longish silence Moppett said: “That’s funny. Lennie says I did. He says I pulled them on during the drive from London yesterday morning. I don’t remember. I might or I might not. If I did I just don’t know where I left them.”

“Did he wear his overcoat when you returned to Baynesholme for the party?”

“No,” Moppett said, quickly. “No, he didn’t. It was rather warm.” She got to her feet. “I ought to be going back,” she said. “You don’t have to tell Lennie I came, do you? He’s a bit tricky about that sort of thing.”

“What sort of thing?”

“Well — you know.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know.”

She watched him for a second or two: then, literally, she bared her teeth at him. It was exactly as if she had, at the same time, laid back her ears. “You’re lying,” she said. “I know. You’ve found them, and you’re sticking to them. I know the sort of things you do.”

“That statement,” Alleyn said mildly, “is utter nonsense, and you will create an extremely bad impression if you persist in it. You have reported the loss of the gloves and the loss has been noted. Is there anything else you would like to discuss?”

“My God, no!” she said and walked out of the Station. They heard her start up the car and go roaring off down the lane.

“Now, what do we make of that little lot?” Fox asked.

“What we have to do is find the damn’ gloves.”

“He’ll have got rid of them. Or tried to. Or else she really has lost them and he’s dead-scared we’ll pick them up. That’d be a good enough reason for him giving her the works.”

“Hold on, Br’er Fox. You’re getting yourself wedded to a bit of hearsay evidence.”

“Am I?”

“We’ve only her word that he’s giving her fits.”

“That’s right,” Fox agreed in his rather heavy way. “So we have.” He ruminated for a short time. “Opportunity?” he said.

“They collared a bottle of their host’s champagne and set themselves up in his study. He had to turf them out, I gather, at the tag end of the party. And, by the way, he handed Leiss his overcoat, so that bit was a lie. I imagine they could have nipped off and back again without much trouble. It may interest you to learn, Br’er Fox, that when they were discovered by Bimbo Dodds, Mr. Leiss was assuring his girl friend that Mr. Cartell was disposed of and she had no need to worry.”

“Good gracious.”

“Makes you fink, don’t it?”

“When was this?”

“Dodds thinks it was about two a.m. He, by the way, is the B. A. Dodds who was mixed up in the night club affair that later became the Hacienda case and Leonard Leiss is a member of the Hacienda.”

“Fancy!”

“Of course he may have invented the whole story. Or mistaken the implication.”

“Two a.m. About. The only firm time we’ve got out of the whole lot,” Fox grumbled, “is one a.m. According to everybody, the deceased always took the dog out at one. Mr. Belt and Mrs. Mitchell reckon he used to wait till he heard the church clock. The last car from the treasure hunt was back at Baynesholme by midnight. Yes,” Fox concluded sadly, “it was an open field all right.”

“Did either Alfred or Mrs. Mitchell hear anything?”

“Not a thing. They’re both easy sleepers. Alfred,” Fox sighed, “was thinking of turning in his job, and she was thinking of following suit.”

“Why?”

“He reckoned he couldn’t take the new setup. The bitch worried him. Not even clean, Mrs. Mitchell says. And the deceased seems to have suggested that Alfred might have had something to do with the missing cigarette case, which, Mrs. Mitchell says, Alfred took great exception to. They were both very upset, because they’ve been there so long and didn’t fancy a change at their time of life. Alfred went so far as to tell Mr. Period that it was either them or Mr. Cartell.”

“When did he do that, Fox?”

“Last evening. Mr. Period was horribly put out about it, Mrs. Mitchell says. He made out life wouldn’t be worth living without Alfred and her. And he practically undertook to terminate Mr. Cartell’s tenancy. They’d never known him to be in such a taking-on. Quite frantic, was the way she put it.”

“Indeed?…I think he cooked the baptismal register, all right, Fox, and I think Mr. Cartell rumbled it,” Alleyn said, and described his visit to Ribblethorpe.

“Now, isn’t that peculiar behaviour!” Fox exclaimed. “A gentleman going to those lengths to make out he’s something he is not. You’d hardly credit it.”

“You’d better, because I’ve a strong hunch that this case may well turn about Mr. Period’s obsession. And it is an obsession, Br’er Fox. He’s been living in a world of fantasy, and it’s in danger of exploding over his head.”

“Lor!” Fox remarked, comfortably.

“When you retire in fifty years’ time,” Alleyn said with an affectionate glance at his colleague, “you must write a monograph on Snobs I Have Known. It’s a fruitful field and it has yet to be exhausted. Shall I tell you what I think might be the Period story?”

“I’d be obliged,” said Fox.

“Well, then. A perfectly respectable upper-middle-class origin. A natural inclination for grandeur and a pathologically sensitive nose for class distinctions. Money, from whatever source, at an early enough age to provide the suitable setting. Employment that brings him in touch with the sort of people he wants, God save the mark, to cultivate. And all this, Br’er Fox, in, let us say, the twenties, when class distinctions were comparatively unjolted. It would be during this period — what a name he’s got, to be sure! — that a fantasy began to solidify. He became used to the sort of people he had admired, felt himself to be one of them, scarcely remembered his natural background and began to think of himself as one of the nobs. The need for justification nagged at him. He’s got this unusual name. Somebody said: ‘By the way, are you any relation to the Period who married one of the Ribblethorpe Pykes?’ and he let it be thought he was. So he began to look into the Ribblethorpe Pykes and Periods and found that both sides have died out. It would be about now that ‘Pyke’ was adopted as a second name — not hyphenated, but always used. He may have done it by deed poll. That, of course, can be checked. And — well, there you are. I daresay that by now he’d persuaded himself he was all he claimed to be and was happily established in his own fairy tale until Cartell, by some chance, was led to do a little private investigation and, being exasperated beyond measure, blew the gaff at yesterday’s luncheon party. And if that,” Alleyn concluded, “is not an excursion into the hateful realms of surmise and conjecture, I don’t know what it is.”

“Silly,” Fox said. “If true. But it makes you feel sorry for him.”

“Does it? Yes, I suppose it does.”

“Well, it does me,” Fox said uneasily. “What’s the next move, Mr. Alleyn?”

“We’ll have to try to find those blasted gloves.”

“Where do we start?”

“Ask yourself. We’re told by the unspeakable Moppett that she wore them when they drove from London to Little Codling. They might have been dropped at Miss Cartell’s, Mr. Period’s, or Baynesholme. They might be in the pocket of the Scorpion. They might have been burnt or buried. All we know is that it’s odds-on the planks were shifted, with homicidal intent, by someone who was probably wearing leather and string gloves, and that Leonard Leiss, according to his fancy-girl, is raising merry hell because he’s lost such a pair. So, press on, Br’er Fox. Press on.”

“Where do we begin?”

“The obvious place is Miss Cartell’s. The Moppett says she dumped their overcoats there, and that the gloves were in Leiss’s pocket. I don’t want Miss Cartell to think we’re hounding her treasured ward, because if she does think that, she perfectly capable of collaborating with Leiss or the Moppett herself or Lord knows who, out of pure protective hennery. She’s a fool of a woman, Lord help her. I tell you what, Fox. You do your well-known stuff with Trudi — and make it jolly careful. Then try your hand with the Period household, which evidently, as far as the staff is concerned, has been nicely softened-up by you.”

“They’re going out this evening,” Fox said. “Church Social. They’ll be in great demand, I daresay.”

“Damn. All right, we’d better let them go. And, if that fails, we’ll have to ask at Baynesholme. What’s the matter?”

Fox was looking puffy — a sure sign, in that officer, of embarrassment.

“Well, Mr. Alleyn,” he said, “I was just thinking.”

“Thinking what?”

“Well, there’s one aspect of the case which of course you’ve considered, so I’m sure there’s no need to mention it. But since you ask me, there’s the other young couple. Mr. Bantling and Miss Maitland-Mayne.”

“I know. They were canoodling in the lane until after the other couples went back to Baynesholme, and might therefore have done the job. So they might, Br’er Fox. So, indubitably, they might.”

“It’d be nice to clear them up.”

“Your ideas about what would be nice vary between a watertight capital charge and cold lamb with cucumber relish. But it would be nice, I agree.”

“You may say, you see, that as far as the young man is concerned, somebody else’s defending counsel, with his back to the wall, could talk about motive.”

“You may indeed.”

“Mind, as far as the young lady’s concerned, the idea’s ridiculous. I think you said they met for the first time yesterday morning.”

“I did. And apparently took to each other at first sight. But, I promise you, you’re right. As far as the young lady is concerned I really do believe the idea’s ridiculous. As for Master Andrew Bantling, he’s a conventionally dressed chap. I can’t think that his rig was topped off by a pair of string-backed hacking gloves. All right,” Alleyn said, raising a finger. “Could he, by some means, have got hold of Leiss’s gloves? When? At Baynesholme? There, or at Mr. Period’s? Very well! So he drove his newly acquired girlfriend to the lane, confided his troubles to her, put on Leiss’s gloves and asked her to wait a bit while he rearranged the planks.”

“Well, there you are!” Fox exclaimed. “Exactly. Ridiculous!” He nodded once or twice and then said: “Where is he? Not that it matters.”

Alleyn looked at his watch.

“I should think,” he said, “he’s on the main London highway with Nicola Maitland-Mayne. God bless my soul!” he ejaculated.

“What’s up, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Do you know, I believe she’s taking him to show one of his paintings to Troy. Tonight. She asked me if I thought Troy would mind. This was before the case had developed. I don’t mind betting she sticks to it.”

In this supposition he was entirely right.

“She’s not a Scorpion,” Andrew remarked as he negotiated a conservative overtake, “but she goes, bless her tiny little horsepower. It feels to me, Nicola, that we have been taking this trip together much more often than twice. Are you ever called ‘Nicky’?”

“Sometimes.”

“I don’t really take to abbreviations, but I shall think about it. Better than ‘Cola,’ which sounds like a commercial.”

“I am never called ‘Cola.’ ”

“That’s right. One must draw the line somewhere, must not one?”

Conscious of an immense and illogical wave of happiness, Nicola looked at him. Why should his not singularly distinguished profile be so pleasing to her? Was it the line of the jaw, about which she seemed to remember lady novelists make a great to-do? Or his mouth, which she supposed should be called generous? It was certainly amusing.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

“Nothing. Why?”

“You were looking at me,” Andrew said, keeping a steady eye on the road.

“Sorry.”

“Not at all. Dear Nicola.”

“Don’t go too fast.”

“I’m not. She won’t do more than fifty. Oh, I beg your pardon. I see what you mean. All right, I won’t. But my aim, as I thought I had indicated, is not an immediate, snappy little affair with no bones broken. Far from it.”

“I see.”

“Tell me, if you don’t mind, what you think of my people. No holds barred. It’s not an idle question.”

“I like your mama.”

“So do I, but of course one ought to point out her legend which I expect you’re familiar with, anyway. Most of it’s fairly true. She’s an outrageous woman really.”

“But kind. I set great store by kindness.”

“Well, yes. As long as she doesn’t get stuck into a feud with somebody. She’s generous and you can talk to her about anything. You may get a cockeyed reaction but it’ll be intelligent. I dote on her.”

“Are you like her?”

“1 expect so, but less eccentric in my habits. I’m of a retiring disposition, compared to her, and spend most of my spare time painting, which makes me unsociable. I know I don’t look like it, but I’m a serious painter.”

“Well, of course. Are you very modern? All intellect, paint droppings and rude shapes?”

“Not really. You’ll have to see.”

“By the way, the Cid says Troy would be delighted if we’d call. To show her your work.”

“The Cid?”

“Superintendent Alleyn, C.I.D. Just my girlish fun.”

“I can take it if he can,” Andrew said kindly. “But you know I doubt, really, if I dare show her anything. Suppose she should find it tedious and sterile?”

“She will certainly say so.”

“That’s what I feared. She takes pupils, doesn’t she? Very grand ones with genius dripping out of their beards?”

“That’s right. Would you like her to take you?”

“Lord, Lord!” Andrew said. “What a notion!”

“If it’s not a question in bad taste, will you be able to get the Grantham Gallery, now, as you hoped?”

“I wanted to talk to you about it. I think I might, you know. I don’t imagine P.P. will raise the same objections. I talked to him about it yesterday morning.”

Remembering what Mr. Period had said about these plans, Nicola asked Andrew if he didn’t think there would be some difficulty.

“Oh, I don’t, really. He talked a lot of guff about tradition and so on but I’m sure he’ll be reasonable. He’s different from Hal. He was just being bloody-minded because I wanted to leave the Brigade and because he was bloody-minded anyway, poor old Hal. All the same, I wish I hadn’t parted from him breathing hell-fury. Seeing what’s happened. He wasn’t such a bad old stinker,” Andrew reflected. “Better than Bimbo, anyway. What, by the way, did you think of Bimbo?”

“Well—”

“Come on. Honestly.”

“There wasn’t anything to think. Just a rather negative, fashionable, ambiguous sort of person.”

“I simply can’t imagine what persuaded my Mama to marry him. Well, I suppose I can, really.” Andrew hit his closed fist once upon the driving wheel. “Still, don’t let’s talk about that.”

He drove on for some minutes in silence while Nicola tried to sort out her desperate misgivings. “Andrew,” she said at last, and because he answered “What, dear?” so gently, and with such an old-fashioned air, found herself at a complete disadvantage.

“Look,” she said. “Have you thought — I know it’s fantastic — but have you…?”

“All right,” Andrew said. “I know. Have I thought that Hal’s death is a material advantage to me and that your Cid probably knows it? Yes, I have. Strangely enough, it doesn’t alarm me. Nicola, it’s not fair to wish all this business on you. Here I am, doing nothing but talk about me and setting myself up as an insufferable egoist, no doubt. Am I boring you very much?”

“No,” Nicola said truthfully. “You’re not doing that. You’re talking about yourself, which is the usual thing.”

“My God!” Andrew ejaculated. “How very chastening.”

“This time it’s a bit different.”

“Is it? How much?”

“No,” Nicola said. “Don’t let’s rush our fences. We only met yesterday morning. Everything’s being precipitated like one of those boring chemical experiments. Don’t let’s pay too much attention.”

“Just as you like,” he said huffily. “I was going to ask if you’d dine with me. Is that too precipitate?”

“I expect it is, really, but I’d like to. Thank you, Andrew. I have a motive.”

“And what the hell is that?”

“I did mention it before. I’m going to visit Troy Alleyn this evening, and I wondered if you’d come with me and show her a picture. As I told you, the Cid says she’d be delighted.”

Andrew was silent for a moment and then burst out laughing. “Well, I must say!” he ejaculated. “As one of the suspects in a murder charge — yes, I am, Nicola. You can’t escape it — I’m being invited to pay a social call on the chief cop’s wife. How dotty can you get?”

“Well, why not?”

“Will he be there? No, I suppose not. He’ll be lying flat on his stomach in Green Lane looking for my boot-prints.”

“So it’s a date?”

“It’s a date.”

“Then, shall we collect your pictures? I live quite close to the Alleyns. Could you make do with an omelette in my flat?”

“Do you share it with two other nice girls?”

“No.”

“Then I’d love to.”

Nicola’s flat was a converted studio off the Brompton Road. It was large and airy and extremely uncluttered. The walls were white and the curtains and chairs yellow. A workmanlike desk stood against the north window and a pot of yellow tulips on the table. There was only one picture, hung above the fireplace. Andrew went straight to it.

“Gosh,” he said, “it’s a Troy. And it’s you.”

“It was for my twenty-first birthday, last year. Wasn’t it wonderful of her?”

There was a long silence. “Wonderful,” Andrew said. “Wonderful.” And she left him to look at it while she rang Troy Alleyn and then set to work in her kitchen.

They had cold soup, an omelette, white wine, cheese and salad, and their meal was extremely successful. They both behaved in an exemplary manner, and if their inclination to depart from this standard crackled in the air all round them, they contrived to disregard it. They talked and talked and were happy.

“It’s almost nine o’clock,” Nicola said. “We mustn’t be too late at Troy’s. She’ll be delighted to see you, by the way.”

“Will she?”

“Why did you leave your pictures in the car?”

“I don’t know. Well, yes I do, but it doesn’t matter. Wouldn’t it be nice to stay here?”

“Come on,” Nicola said firmly.

When they had shut the door behind them, Andrew took her hands in his, thanked her for his entertainment and kissed her lightly on the cheek.

“Here we go,” he said.

They collected the canvases from the car and walked to the Alleyns’ house, which was at the end of a blind street near Montpelier Square. It was such a natural and familiar thing for Nicola to take this evening walk that her anxieties left her, and by the time they reached their destination and Troy herself opened the door to them, she felt nothing but pleasure in their expedition.

Troy was wearing the black trousers and smock that meant she had been working. Her shortish dark hair capped a spare head and fell in a single lock across her forehead. Andrew stood to attention and carried his canvases as if they were something rather disgraceful that had been found in the guardroom.

“I’m in the studio,” Troy said. “Shall we go there? It’s a better light.”

Andrew himself fell in and followed them.

There was a large charcoal drawing on the easel in Troy’s studio: a woman with a cat. On the table where Troy had been working were other drawings under a strong lamp.

Andrew said: “Mrs. Alleyn, it’s terribly kind of you to let me come.”

“Why?” Troy said, cheerfully. “You’re going to show me some work, aren’t you?”

“Oh God!” Andrew said. “So Nicola tells me.”

Troy looked at him in a friendly manner and began to talk about the subject of the drawing, saying how paintable and silly she was, always changing her hair and coming in the wrong clothes, and that the drawing was a study for a full-scale portrait. Andrew eased up a little.

Nicola said: “There are one or two things to explain.”

“Not as many as you may think. Rory rang up an hour ago from Little Codling.”

“Did he tell you about Andrew’s stepfather?”

“Yes, he did. I expect,” Troy said to Andrew, “it seems unreal as well as dreadful, doesn’t it?”

“In a way it does. We — I didn’t see much of him. I mean—”

“Andrew,” Nicola said, “insists that the Cid has got him down among the suspects.”

“Well, it’s not for me to say,” Troy replied, “but I didn’t think it sounded like that. Let’s have a look at your things.”

She took her drawing off the easel and put it against the wall. Andrew dropped all his paintings on the floor with a sudden crash. “I’m frightfully sorry,” he said.

“Come on,” Troy said. “I’m not a dentist. Put it on the easel.”

The first painting was a still life: tulips on a window sill in a red goblet with rooftops beyond them.

“Hul-lo!” Troy said and sat down in front of it.

Nicola wished she knew a great deal more about painting. She could see it was incisive, freely done and lively, with a feeling for light and colour. She realized that she would have liked it very much if she had come across it somewhere else. It didn’t look at all amateurish.

“Yes, well of course,” Troy said, and it was clear that she meant: “Of course you’re a painter and you were right to show me this.” She went on talking to Andrew, asking him about his palette and the conditions under which he worked. Then she saw his next canvas, which was a portrait. Désirée’s flaming hair and cadaverous eyes leapt out of a flowery background. She had sat in a glare of sunlight and the treatment was far from being conventional.

“My mum,” Andrew said.

“You had fun with the colour, didn’t you? Don’t you find the eye-round-the-corner hell to manage in a three-quarter head? This one hasn’t quite come off, has it? Look, it’s that dab of pink that hits up. Now, let’s see the next one.”

The next and last one was a male torso uncompromisingly set against a white wall. It had been painted with exhaustive attention to anatomy. “Heavens!” Troy ejaculated. “You’ve practically skinned the man.” She looked at it for some time and then said: “Well, what are you going to do about this? Would you like to work here once a week?”

After that Andrew was able to talk to her and did so with such evident delight that Nicola actually detected in herself a twinge of something that astonished her and gave an edge to her extreme happiness.

It was not until much later, when Troy had produced lager, and they were telling her about the Grantham Gallery project, that Nicola remembered Mr. Period.

“I think,” she told Troy, “you’re going to be approached by my new boss. He’s writing a book on etiquette and his publishers want a drawing of him. He’s rather shy about asking because you turned down one of his lordly chums. You know him, don’t you? Mr. Pyke Period?”

“Yes, of course I do. He crops up at all the Private Views that he thinks are smart occasions. I’ll be blowed if I’ll draw him.”

“I was afraid that might be your reaction.”

“Well,” Troy said, “there’s no denying he really is a complete old phony. Do you know he once commissioned a pupil of mine to do a painting from some print he’d picked up, of a Georgian guardee making faces at a thunderstorm. He said it was one of his ancestors, and so it may have been, but after a lot of beating about the bush he made it quite clear that he wanted this job faked to look like an eighteenth-century portrait. My pupil was practically on the breadline at the time and I’m afraid the thing was done.”

“Oh, dear!” Nicola sighed. “I know. It’s there, in the library, I think. He’s like that, but he’s rather an old sweetie-pie, all the same. Isn’t he, Andrew?”

“Nicola,” said Andrew, “I daresay he is. But he’s a terrible old donkey. And yet — I don’t know. Is P.P. just plain silly? I doubt it. I rather think there’s an element of low cunning.”

“Childish, not low,” Nicola insisted, but Andrew was looking at her with such a degree of affectionate attention that she was extremely flustered.

“Well,” Andrew said. “Never mind, anyway, about P.P.”

“I can’t help it. He was so miserable all the afternoon. You know: trying to forge ahead with his tips on U-necessities, as he inevitably calls them, and then falling into wretched little trances. He really was in a bad state. Everything seemed to upset him.”

“What sorts of things?” Troy asked. “Have some more lager?”

“No, thank you. Well, he kept singing in an extremely dismal manner. And then he would stop and turn sheet-white. He muttered something about ‘No, no, I mustn’t — better forget it,’ and looked absolutely terrified.”

“How very odd,” Andrew said. “What was his song?”

“I don’t remember — yes, I do!” Nicola exclaimed. “Of course I do! Because he’d done the same sort of thing yesterday, after lunch: hummed it and then been cross with himself. But it was different today. He seemed quite shattered.”

“And the song?”

“It was the pop-song that ghastly Leonard kept whistling through his teeth at luncheon. He even sang a bit of it when they were looking at the cigarette case: If you mean what I think you mean, O.K. by me. Things aren’t always what they seem. O.K. by me.”

“Not exactly a ‘Period piece.’ ”

“It was all very rum.”

“Did you happen to mention it to Rory?” Troy asked.

“No. I haven’t seen him since it happened. And anyway, why should I?”

“No reason at all, I daresay.”

“Look,” Nicola said quickly, “however foolish he may be, Mr. Period is quite incapable of the smallest degree of hanky-panky—” She stopped short and the now familiar jolt of indefinable panic revisited her. “Serious hanky-panky, I mean,” she amended.

“Good Lord, no!” Andrew said. “Of course he is. Incapable, I mean.”

Nicola stood up. “It’s a quarter to twelve,” she said. “We must go, Andrew. Poor Troy!”

The telephone rang and Troy answered it. The voice at the other end said quite distinctly: “Darling?”

“Hullo,” Troy said. “Still at it?”

“Very much so. Is Nicola with you?”

“Yes,” Troy said. “She and Andrew Bantling.”

“Could I have a word with her?”

“Here you are.”

Troy held out the receiver and Nicola took it feeling her heart thud stupidly against her ribs.

“Hullo, Cid,” she said.

“Hullo, Nicola. There’s something that’s cropped up here that you might just possibly be able to give me a line about. After I left you today, did you discuss our conversation with anybody?”

“Well, yes,” she said. “With Andrew.”

“Anyone else? Now don’t go jumping to conclusions, there’s a good child, but did Mr. Period want to know if you told me anything about his luncheon party?”

Nicola swallowed. “Yes, he did. But it was only, poor lamb, because he hates the idea of your hearing about the digs Mr. Cartell made at his snob-values. He was terribly keen to know if I’d told you anything about the baptismal register story.”

“And you said you had told me?”

“Well, I had to, when he asked me point-blank. I made as little of it as I could.”

“Yes. I see. One other thing — and it’s important, Nicola. Do you, by any chance, know anything that would connect Mr. Period with a popular song?”

“A song! No — not—”

“Something about O.K. by me?”