Tied Up in Tinsel

Nine — Post Mortem

Moult, dead on the flagstones, seemed by his grotesque entry to inject a spasm of activity into his audience.

For a second or two after he rolled into view, the three servants were motionless. And then, without a word, they bolted. They ran out of the courtyard and were swallowed up by the night.

Alleyn had taken half-a-dozen steps after them when they returned as wildly as they had gone, running and waving their arms like characters in some kind of extravaganza. To make the resemblance more vivid, they were now bathed in light as if from an offstage spot. They turned to face it, made prohibitive gestures, shielded their eyes, and huddled together.

The field of light contracted and intensified as a police car moved into the courtyard and stopped. Vincent turned and ran straight into Alleyn’s arms. His companions dithered too long, made as if to bolt, and were taken by four large men who had quitted the car with remarkable expertise.

They were Detective-Sergeants Bailey and Thompson, fingerprint and photography experts, respectively; the driver, and Detective-Inspector Fox.

“Now then!” said Mr. Fox, the largest of the four men, “what’s all the hurry?”

Kittiwee burst into tears.

“All right, all right,” Alleyn said. “Pipe down, the lot of you. Where d’you think you’re going. Over the hill to the Vale? Good-morning, Fox.”

“ ’Morning, Mr. Alleyn. You’ve been busy.”

“As you see.”

“What do we do with this lot?”

“Well may you ask! They’ve been making a disgusting nuisance of themselves.”

“We never done a thing. We never touched him,” Kittiwee bawled. “It’s all a bloody misunderstanding.”

“Touched who?” Inspector Fox asked.

Alleyn, whose arm had been excruciatingly stirred up by Vincent, jerked his head towards the packing case. “Him,” he said.

“Well, well!” Fox observed. “A body, eh?”

“A body.”

“Would this be the missing individual?”

“It would.”

“Do we charge these chaps then?”

“We get them indoors, for Heaven’s sake,” said Alleyn crossly. “Bring them in. It’ll have to be through the window over there. I’ll go ahead and switch on the lights. They’d better be taken to their own quarters. And keep quiet, all of you. We don’t want to rouse the household. Cooke — what’s your name? — Kittiwee — for the love of decency — shut up.”

Fox said, “What about the remains?”

“One thing at a time. Before he’s moved, the Divisional Surgeon will have to take a look. Bailey — Thompson.”

“Sir?”

“You get cracking with this setup. As it lies. Dabs. Outside and inside the packing case. The sledge. All surfaces. And the body, of course. Complete job.” Alleyn walked to the body and stooped over it. It was rigid and all askew. It lay on its back, the head at a grotesque angle to the trunk. One arm was raised. The eyes and the mouth were open. Old, ugly scars on jaw and fattish cheek and across the upper lip, started out lividly.

“But the beard and moustache and wig would have covered those,” Alleyn thought. “There’s nothing in that.”

His hands were busy for a moment. He extracted an empty flat half-pint bottle from a jacket in the coat and sniffed at it. Whisky. From the waistcoat pocket he took a key. Finding nothing more, he then turned away from the body and contemplated Vincent and his associates.

“Are you lot coming quietly?” he asked. “You’ll be mad if you don’t.”

They made affirmative noises.

“Good. You,” Alleyn said to the driver of the police car, “come with us. You,” to Bailey and Thompson, “get on with it. I’ll call up the Div. Surgeon. When you’ve all finished wait for instructions. Where’s your second car, Fox?”

“Puncture. They’ll be here.”

“When they come,” Alleyn said to Bailey, “stick them along the entrances. We don’t want people barging out of the house before you’ve cleared up here. It’s getting on for six. Come on, Fox. Come on, you lot.”

Alleyn led the way through the library window, down the corridor, across the hall, through the green baize door, and into the servants’ common-room. Here they surprised the Boy in the act of lighting the fire. Alleyn sent him with his compliments to Mr. Blore, whom he would be pleased to see. “Is Nigel up?” he asked. The Boy, all eyes, nodded. Nigel, it appeared, was getting out early-morning tea trays in the servery.

“Tell him we’re using this room and don’t want to be disturbed for the moment. Got that? All right. Chuck some coal on the fire and then off you cut, there’s a good chap.”

When the boy had gone Alleyn rang up Wrayburn on the staff telephone, told him of the discovery, and asked him to lay on the Divisional Surgeon as soon as possible. He then returned to the common-room, where he nodded to the Yard car-driver, who took up a position in front of the door.

Mervyn, Kittiwee and Vincent stood in a wet, dismal and shivering group in the middle of the room. Kittiwee mopped his great dimpled face and every now and then, like a baby, caught his breath in a belated sob.

“Now then,” Alleyn said. “I suppose you three know what you’ve done, don’t you? You’ve tried to obstruct the police in the execution of their duty, which is an extremely serious offence.”

They broke into a concerted gabble.

“Pipe down,” he said. “Stop telling me you didn’t do him. Nobody’s said anything to the contrary. So far. You could be charged as accessories after the fact, if you know what that means.”

Mervyn, with some show of dignity, said: “Naturally.”

“All right. In the meantime I’m going to tell you what I think is the answer to your cockeyed behaviour. Get in front of the fire, for pity’s sake. I don’t want to talk to a set of castanets.”

They moved to the hearthrug. Pools formed round their boots, and presently they began to smell and steam. They were a strongly contrasted group: Kittiwee with his fat, as it were, gone soggy; Vincent, ferret-like with the weathered hide of his calling; and Mervyn, dark about the jaws, black-browed and white-faced. They looked at nobody. They waited.

Alleyn eased his throbbing arm a little further into his chest and sat on the edge of the table. Mr. Fox cleared his throat, retired into a sort of self-made obscurity, and produced a notebook.

“If I’ve got this all wrong,” Alleyn said, “the best thing you can do is to put me right, whatever the result. And I mean that. Really. You won’t believe me, but really. Best for yourselves on all counts. Now. Go back to the Christmas tree. The party. The end of the evening. At about midnight, you,” he looked at Vincent, “wheeled the dismantled tree in a barrow to the glasshouse wreckage under the east wing. You tipped it off under Colonel Forrester’s dressing-room window near a sapling fir. Right?”

Vincent’s lips moved inaudibly.

“You made a discovery. Moult’s body, lying at the foot of the tree. I can only guess at your first reaction. I don’t know how closely you examined it, but I think you saw enough to convince you he’d been murdered. You panicked in a big way. Then and there, or later, after you’d consulted your mates —”

There was an involuntary shuffling movement, instantly repressed.

“I see,” Alleyn said. “All right. You came indoors and told Blore and these two what you’d found. Right?”

Vincent ran his tongue round his lips and spoke.

“What say I did? I’m not giving the O.K. to nothing. I’m not concurring, mind. But what say I did? That’d be c’rrect procedure, wouldn’t it? Report what I seen? Wouldn’t it?”

“Certainly. It’s the subsequent ongoings that are not so hot.”

“A chap reports what he seen to the authorities. Over to them.”

“Wouldn’t you call Mr. Bill-Tasman the authority in this case?”

“A chap puts it through the right channels. If. If. See? I’m not saying —”

“I think we’ve all taken the point about what you’re not saying. Let’s press on, shall we, and arrive at what you do say. Let’s suppose you did come indoors and report your find to Mr. Blore. And to these two. But not to Nigel, he being a bit tricky in his reactions. Let’s suppose you four came to a joint decision. Here was the body of a man you all heartily disliked and whom you had jointly threatened and abused that very morning. It looked as if he’d been done to death. This you felt to be an acute embarrassment. For several reasons. Because of your records. And because of singular incidents occurring over the last few days: booby-traps, anonymous messages, soap in the barley water, and so on. And all in your several styles.”

“We never —” Mervyn began.

“I don’t for a moment suggest you did. I do suggest you all believed Moult had perpetrated these unlovely tricks in order to discredit you, and you thought that this circumstance, too, when it came to light, would incriminate you. So I suggest you panicked and decided to get rid of the corpse.”

At this juncture Blore came in. He wore a lush dressing gown over silk pyjamas. So would he have looked, Alleyn thought, if nocturnally disturbed in his restaurant period before the advent of the amorous busboy.

“I understand,” he said to Alleyn, “sir, that you wished to see me.”

“I did and do,” Alleyn rejoined. “For your information, Blore, Alfred Moult’s body has been found in the packing case, supporting Nigel’s version of the Bill-Tasman effigy. These men were about to remove the whole shooting box on a sledge. The idea, I think, was to transfer it to an appropriate sphere of activity where, with the unwitting aid of bulldozers, it would help to form an artificial hillock overlooking an artificial lake. End result, an artifact known, appropriately, as a folly. I’ve been trying to persuade them that their best course — and yours, by the way — is to give me a factual account of the whole affair.”

Blore looked fixedly at the men, who did not look at him.

“So: first,” Alleyn said, “did Vincent come to you and report his finding of the body on Christmas night? Or, rather, at about ten past midnight, yesterday morning?”

Blore dragged at his jaw and was silent.

Vincent suddenly blurted out. “We never said a thing, Mr. Blore. Not a thing.”

“You did, too, Vince,” Kittiwee burst out. “You opened your great silly trap. Didn’t he, Merv?”

“I never. I said ‘if.’ ”

“If what?” Blore asked.

“I said supposing. Supposing what he says was right it’d be the c’rrect and proper procedure. To report to you. Which I done. I mean —”

“Shut up,” Mervyn and Kittiwee said in unison.

“My contention,” Alleyn said to Blore, “is that you decided, among you, to transfer the body to the packing case there and then. You couldn’t take it straight to the dumping ground because in doing so you would leave your tracks over a field of unbroken snow for all to see in the morning and also because any effort you made to cover it at the earthworks would be extremely difficult in the dark and would stand out like a sore thumb by the light of day.

“So one of you was taken with the very bright notion of transferring it to the packing case, which was destined for the earthworks anyway. I suppose Vincent wheeled it round in his barrow and one or more of you gave him a hand to remove the built-up box steps, to open the side of the case, stow away the body, and replace and re-cover the steps. It was noticed next morning that the northern aspect appeared to have been damaged by wind and rain but there had been a further fall of snow which did something to restore them.”

Alleyn waited for a moment. Kittiwee heaved a deep sigh. His associates shuffled their feet.

“I really think we’d all better sit down,” Alleyn said. “Don’t you?”

They sat in the same order as in yesterday’s assembly. Mr. Fox, after his habit, remained unobtrusively in the background, and the driver kept his station in front of the door.

“I wonder,” Alleyn said, “why you decided to shift the case at five o’clock this morning? Had you lost your collective nerve? Had its presence out there become a bit more than some of you could take? Couldn’t you quite face the prospect of dragging it away in the full light of morning and leaving it to the bulldozers to cover? What were you going to do with it? Has the storm produced some morass in the earthworks or the lake site into which it could be depended upon to sink out of sight?”

They shifted their feet and darted sidelong glances at him and at each other. “I see. That’s it. Come,” Alleyn said quietly, “don’t you think you’d better face up to the situation? It looks like a fair cop, doesn’t it? There you were and there’s the body. You may not believe me when I tell you I don’t think any of you killed him, but I certainly don’t intend, at this point, to charge any of you with doing so. You’ve conspired to defeat the ends of justice, though, and whether you’ll have to face that one is another matter. Our immediate concern is to find the killer. If you’re helpful rather than obstructive and behave sensibly we’ll take it into consideration. I’m not offering you a bribe,” Alleyn said. “I’m trying to put the situation in perspective. If you all want a word together in private you may have it, but you’ll be silly if you use the opportunity to cook up a dish of cod’s wallop. What do you say? Blore?”

Blore tilted his head and stared into the fire. His right hand, thick and darkly hirsute, hung between his knees. Alleyn reflected that it had once wielded a lethal carving knife.

Blore heaved a sigh. “I don’t know,” he boomed in his great voice, “that it will serve any purpose to talk. I don’t know, I’m sure.”

None of his friends seemed inclined to help him in his predicament.

“You don’t by any chance feel,” Alleyn said, “that you rather owe it to Mr. Bill-Tasman to clear things up? After all, he’s done quite a lot for you, hasn’t he?”

Kittiwee suddenly revealed himself as a person of intelligence.

“Mr. Bill-Tasman,” he said, “suited himself. He’d never have persuaded the kind of staff he wanted to come to this dump. Not in the ordinary way. He’s got what he wanted. He’s got value and he knows it. If he likes to talk a lot of crap about rehabilitation, that’s his affair. If we hadn’t given the service, you wouldn’t have heard so much about rehabilitation.”

The shadow of a grin visited all their faces.

“Owe it to him!” Kittiwee said and his moon face, still blotted with tears, dimpled into its widest smile. “You’ll be saying next we ought to show our gratitude. We’re always being told we ought to be grateful. Grateful for what? Fair payment for fair services? After eleven years in stir, Mr. Alleyn, you get funny ideas under that heading.”

Alleyn said: “Yes. Yes, I’ve no doubt you do.” He looked round the group. “The truth is,” he said, “that when you come out of stir it’s into another kind of prison and it’s heavy going for the outsider who tries to break in.”

They looked at him with something like astonishment.

“It’s no good keeping on about this,” he said, “I’ve a job to do and so have you. If you agree with the account I’ve put to you about your part in this affair, it’ll be satisfactory to me and I believe the best thing for you. But I can’t wait any longer for the answer. You must please yourselves.”

A long pause.

Mervyn got to his feet, moved to the fireplace, and savagely kicked a log into the flames.

“We got no choice,” he said. “All right. Like you said.”

“Speak for yourself,” Vincent mumbled but without much conviction.

Blore said, “People don’t think.”

“How do you mean?”

“They don’t know. For us, each of us, it was what you might call an isolated act. Like a single outbreak — an abscess that doesn’t spread. Comes to a head and bursts and that’s it. It’s out of the system. We’re no more likely to go violent than anyone else. Less. We know what it’s like afterwards. We’re oncers. People don’t think.”

“Is that true of Nigel?”

They looked quickly at each other.

“He’s a bit touched,” Blore said. “He gets put out. He doesn’t understand.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“I’ll go with what you’ve put to us, sir,” Blore said, exactly as if he hadn’t heard Alleyn’s question. “I’ll agree it’s substantially the case. Vince found the body and came in and told us and we reached a decision. I daresay it was stupid but the way we looked at it we couldn’t afford for him to be found.”

“Who actually moved the body into the packing case?”

Blore said, “I don’t think we’ll go into details,” and Mervyn and Vincent looked eloquently relieved.

“And Nigel knows nothing about it?”

“That’s right. He’s settled that Mr. Moult was struck down by a sense of sin for mocking us and went off somewhere to repent.”

“I see.” Alleyn glanced at Fox, who put up his notebook and cleared his throat. “I’ll have a short statement written out and will ask you all to sign it if you find it correct.”

“We haven’t said we’ll sign anything,” Blore interjected in a hurry and the others made sounds of agreement.

“Quite so,” Alleyn said. “It’ll be your decision.”

He walked out followed by Fox and the driver.

“Do you reckon,” Fox asked, “there’ll be any attempt to scarper?”

“I don’t think so. They’re not a stupid lot: the stowing of the body was idiotic but they’d panicked.”

Fox said heavily, “This type of chap: you know, the oncer. He always bothers me. There’s something in what they said: you can’t really call him a villain. Not in the accepted sense. He’s funny.” Fox meditated. “That flabby job. The cook. What was it you call him?”

“ ‘Kittiwee.’ ”

“I thought that was what you said.”

“He’s keen on cats. À propos, cats come into my complicated story. I’d better put you in the picture, Br’er Fox. Step into the hall.”

Alleyn finished his recital, to which Mr. Fox had listened with his customary air: raised brows, pursed lips and a hint of catarrhal breathing. He made an occasional note and when Alleyn had finished remarked that the case was “unusual” as if a new sartorial feature had been introduced by a conservative tailor.

All this took a considerable time. When it was over, seven o’clock had struck. Curtains were still drawn across the hall windows, but on looking through Alleyn found that they were guarded on the outside by Fox’s reinforcements and that Bailey and Thompson held powerful lights to the body of Albert Moult while a heavily overcoated person stooped over it.

“The Div. Surgeon,” Alleyn said. “Here’s the key of the cloakroom, Fox. Have a shiner at it while I talk to him. Go easy. We’ll want the full treatment in there.”

The Divisional Surgeon, Dr. Moore, said that Moult had either been stunned or killed outright by a blow on the nape of the neck and that the neck had subsequently been broken, presumably by a fall. When Alleyn fetched the poker and they laid it by the horrid wound, the stained portion was found to coincide and the phenomenon duly photographed. Dr. Moore, a weathered man with a good keen eye, was then taken to see the wig, and in the wet patch Alleyn found a tiny skein of hair that had not been washed perfectly clean. It was agreed that this and the poker should be subjected to the sophisticated attention of the Yard’s pathological experts.

“He’s been thumped all right,” said Dr. Moore. “I suppose you’ll talk to Sir James.” Sir James Curtis was Consultant Pathologist to the Yard. “I wouldn’t think,” Dr. Moore added, “there’d be much point in leaving the body there. It’s been rolled about all over the shop, it seems, since he was thumped. But thumped he was.”

And he drove himself back to Downlow where he practised. The time was now seven-thirty.

Alleyn said, “He’s about right, you know, Fox. I’ll get through to Curtis but I think he’ll say we can move the body. There are some empty rooms in the stables under the clock tower. You chaps can take him round in the car. Lay him out decently, of course. Colonel Forrester will have to identify.”

Alleyn telephoned Sir James Curtis and was given rather grudging permission to remove Moult from Hilary’s doorstep. Sir James liked bodies to be in situ but conceded that as this one had been, as he put it, rattled about like dice in a box, the objection was academic. Alleyn rejoined Fox in the hall. “We can’t leave Bill-Tasman uninformed much longer,” he said, “I suppose. Worse luck. I must say I don’t relish the prospect of coming reactions.”

“If we exclude the servants, and I take it we do, we’ve got a limited field of possibilities, haven’t we, Mr. Alleyn?”

“Six, if you also exclude thirty-odd guests and Troy.”

“A point being,” said Mr. Fox, pursuing after his fashion, his own line of thought, “whether or not it was a case of mistaken identity. Taking into consideration the wig and whiskers.”

“Quite so. In which case the field is reduced to five.”

“Anyone with a scunner on the Colonel, would you say?”

“I’d have thought it a psychological impossibility. He’s walked straight out of Winnie-the-Pooh.”

“Anybody profit by his demise?”

“I’ve no idea. I understand his will’s in the tin box.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Together with the crown jewels and various personal documents. We’ll have to see.”

“What beats me,” said Mr. Fox, “on what you’ve told me, is this. The man Moult finishes his act. He comes back to the cloakroom. The young lady takes off his wig and whiskers and leaves him there. She takes them off. Unless,” Fox said carefully, “she’s lying, of course. But suppose she is? Where does that lead you?”

“All right, Br’er Fox, where does it lead you?”

“To a nonsense,” Fox said warmly. “That’s where. To some sort of notion that she went upstairs and got the poker and came back and hit him with it, Gawd knows why, and then dragged him upstairs under the noses of the servants and kids and all and removed the wig and pitched him and the poker out of the window. Or walked upstairs with him alive when we know the servants saw her go through this hall on her own and into the drawing room and anyway there wasn’t time and — Well,” said Fox, “why go on with it? It’s silly.”

“Very.”

“Rule her out, then. So we’re left with? What? This bit of material from his robe, now. If that’s what it was. That was caught up in the tree? So he was wearing the robe when he pitched out of the window. So why isn’t it torn and wet and generally mucked up and who put it back in the cloakroom?”

“Don’t you rather feel that the scrap of material might have been stuck to the poker. Which was in the tree.”

“Damn!” said Fox. “Yes. Damn. All right. Well now. Sometime or another he falls out of the upstairs window, having been hit on the back of his head with the upstairs poker. Wearing the wig?”

“Go on, Br’er Fox.”

“Well — presumably wearing the wig. On evidence, wearing the wig. We don’t know about the whiskers.”

“No.”

“No. So we waive them. Never mind the whiskers. But the wig — the wig turns up in the cloakroom same as the robe, just where they left it, only with all the signs of having been washed where the blow fell and not so efficiently but that there’s a trace of something that might be blood. So what do we get? The corpse falling through the window, replacing the wig, washing it and the robe clean, and going back and lying down again.”

“A droll conceit.”

“All right. And where does it leave us? With Mr. Bill-Tasman, the Colonel and his lady and this Bert Smith. Can we eliminate any of them?”

“I think we can.”

“You tell me how. Now, then.”

“In response to your cordial invitation, Br’er Fox. I shall attempt to do so.”

The men outside, having been given the office, lifted the frozen body of Alfred Moult into their car and drove away to the rear of the great house. The effigy of Hilary Bill-Tasman’s ancestor, reduced to a ghastly storm-pocked wraith, dwindled on the top of the packing case. And Alleyn, watching through the windows, laid out for Fox, piece by piece, his assemblage of events fitting each until a picture was completed.

When he had done, his colleague drew one of his heavy sighs and wiped his great hand across his mouth.

“That’s startling and it’s clever,” he said. “It’s very clever indeed. It’ll be a job to make a dead bird of it, though.”

“Yes.”

“No motive, you see. That’s always awkward. Well — no apparent motive. Unless there’s one locked up somewhere behind the evidence.”

Alleyn felt in his breast pocket, drew out his handkerchief, unfolded it and exposed a key: a commonplace barrel-key such as would fit a commonplace padlock.

“This may help us,” he said, “to break in.”

“I only need one guess,” said Mr. Fox.

Before Alleyn went to tell Hilary of the latest development, he and Fox visited Nigel in the servery, where they found him sitting in an apparent trance with an assembly of early morning tea trays as his background. Troy would have found this a paintable subject, thought Alleyn.

At first, when told that Moult was dead, Nigel looked sideways at Alleyn as if he thought he might be lying. But finally he nodded portentously several times. “Vengeance is Mine, saith the Lord,” he said.

“Not in this instance,” Alleyn remarked. “He’s been murdered.”

Nigel put his head on one side and stared at Alleyn through his white eyelashes. Alleyn began to wonder if his wits had quite turned or if, by any chance, he was putting it on.

“How?” Nigel asked.

“He was hit with a poker.”

Nigel sighed heavily: “Like Fox,” Alleyn thought irrelevantly.

“Everywhere you turn,” Nigel generalized, “sinful ongoings! Fornication galore. Such is the vice and depravity of these licentious times.”

“The body,” Alleyn pressed on, “was found in the packing case under your effigy.”

“Well,” Nigel snapped, “if you think I put it there you’re making a very big mistake.” He gazed at Alleyn for some seconds. “Though it’s well known to the Lord God of Hosts,” he added in a rising voice, “that I’m a sinner. A sinner!” he repeated loudly and now he really did look demented. “I smote a shameless lady in the face of the Heavens and they opened and poured down their phials of wrath upon me. Because such had not been their intention. My mistake.” And as usual when recalling his crime, he burst into tears.

Alleyn and Fox withdrew into the hall.

“That chap’s certifiable,” said Fox, looking very put out. “I mean to say, he’s certifiable.”

“I’m told he only cuts up rough occasionally.”

“Does he cart those trays round the bedrooms?”

“At eight-thirty, Troy says.”

“I wouldn’t fancy the tea.”

“Troy says it’s all right. It’s Vincent who’s the arsenic expert, remember, not Nigel.”

“I don’t like it,” Fox said.

“Damn it all, Br’er Fox, nor do I. I don’t like Troy being within a hundred miles of a case, as you very well know. I don’t like — well, never mind all that. Look. Here are the keys of Colonel Forrester’s dressing-room. I want Thompson and Bailey to give it the full treatment. Window-sashes. All surfaces and objects. That’s the wardrobe key. It’s highly probable that there are duplicates of the whole lot but never mind. In the wardrobe, standing on its end, is this damned tin uniform box. Particular attention to that. Tell him to report to me when they’ve finished. I’m going to stir up Bill-Tasman.”

“For God’s sake!” cried Hilary from the top of the stairs. “What now!”

He was leaning over the gallery in his crimson dressing gown. His hair rose in a crest above his startled countenance. He was extremely pale.

“What’s happening in the stable yard?” he demanded. “What are they doing? You’ve found him? Haven’t you? You’ve found him.”

“Yes,” said Alleyn. “I’m on my way to tell you. Will you wait? Join us, Fox, when you’re free.”

Hilary waited, biting his knuckles. “I should have been told,” he began as soon as Alleyn reached him. “I should have been told at once.”

“Can we go somewhere private?”

“Yes, yes, yes. All right. Come to my room. I don’t like all this. One should be told.”

He led the way round the gallery to his bedroom, a magnificent affair in the west wing corresponding, Alleyn supposed, with that occupied by Cressida in the east wing. It overlooked on one side the courtyard, on the other the approach from the main road, and in front, the parklands-to-be. A door stood open into a dressing-room and beyond that into a bathroom. The dominant feature was a fourposter on a dais, sumptuously canopied and counterpaned.

“I’m sorry,” Hilary said, “if I was cross, but really the domestic scene in this house becomes positively quattrocento. I glance through my window,” he gestured to the one that overlooked the courtyard, “and see something quite unspeakable being pushed into a car. I glance through the opposite window and the car is being driven round the house. I go to the far end of the corridor and look into the stable yard and there they are, at it again, extricating their hideous find. No!” Hilary cried. “It’s too much. Admit. It’s too much.”

There was a tap on the door. Hilary answered it and disclosed Mr. Fox. “How do you do,” Hilary said angrily.

Alleyn introduced them and proceeded, painstakingly, to rehearse the circumstances leading to the discovery of Moult. Hilary interrupted the recital with petulant interjections.

“Well, now you’ve found it,” he said when he had allowed Alleyn to finish, “what happens? What is expected of me? My servants will no doubt be in an advanced state of hysteria, and I wouldn’t be surprised if one and all they gave me notice. But command me. What must I do?”

Alleyn said, “I know what a bore it all is for you, but it really can’t be helped. Can it? We’ll trouble you as little as possible and, after all, if you don’t mind a glimpse of the obvious, it’s been an even greater bore for Moult.”

Hilary turned slightly pink. “Now you’re making me feel shabby,” he said. “What an alarming man you are. One doesn’t know where to have you. Well — what shall I do?”

“Colonel Forrester must be told that Moult has been found, that he’s dead, that he’s been murdered, and that we shall ask the Colonel to identify the body?”

“Oh no!” Hilary shouted. “How beastly for him! Poorest Uncle Flea! Well, I can’t tell him. I’ll come with you if you do,” he added. “I mean if you tell him. Oh all right, then, I’ll tell him but I’d like you to come.”

He walked about the room, muttering disconsolately.

Alleyn said, “But of course I’ll come. I’d rather be there.”

“On the watch!” Hilary pounced. “That’s it, isn’t it? Looking out for the way we all behave?”

“See here,” Alleyn said. “You manoeuvred me into taking this case. For more than one reason I tried to get out of it but here, in the event, I am, and very largely by your doing. Having played for me and got me, I’m afraid you’ll have to lump me and that’s the long and the short of it.”

Hilary stared at him for some seconds and then the odd face Troy had likened to that of a rather good-looking camel broke into a smile.

“How you do cut one down to size!” he said. “And of course you’re right. I’m behaving badly. My dear man, do believe me, really I’m quite ashamed of myself and I am, indeed I am, more than thankful we are in your hands. Peccavi, peccavi,” cried Hilary, putting his hands together and after a moment, with a decisive air: “Well! The sooner it’s over the better, no doubt. Shall we seek out Uncle Flea?”

But there was no need to seek him out. He was coming agitatedly along the corridor with his wife at his heels, both wearing their dressing gowns.

“There you are!” he said. “They’ve found him, haven’t they? They’ve found poor Moult.”

“Come in, Uncle,” Hilary said. “Auntie — come in.”

They came in, paused at the sight of Alleyn and Fox, said, “Good morning,” and turned simultaneously on Hilary. “Speak up, do,” said Mrs. Forrester. “He’s been found?”

“How did you know? Yes,” said Hilary. “He has.”

“Is he —?”

“Yes, Uncle Flea, I’m afraid so. I’m awfully sorry.”

“You’d better sit down, Fred. Hilary; your uncle had belter sit down.”

Colonel Forrester turned to Alleyn. “Please tell me exactly what has happened,” he said. “I should like a full report.”

“Shall we obey orders and sit down, sir? It’ll take a little time.”

The Colonel made a slight impatient gesture but he took the chair Hilary pushed forward. Mrs. Forrester walked over to the windows, folded her arms and throughout Alleyn’s recital stared out at the landscape. Hilary sat on his grand bed and Fox performed his usual feat of self-effacement.

Alleyn gave a full account of the finding of Moult’s body and, in answer to some surprisingly succinct and relevant questions from the Colonel, of the events that led up to it. As he went on he sensed a growing tension in his audience: in their stillness, in Mrs. Forrester’s withdrawal, in her husband’s extreme quietude and in Hilary’s painful concentration.

When he had finished there was a long silence. And then, without turning away from the window or, indeed, making any movements, Mrs. Forrester said, “Well, Hilary, your experiment has ended as might have been predicted. In disaster.”

Alleyn waited for an expostulation, if not from the Colonel, at least from Hilary. But Hilary sat mum on his magnificent bed and the Colonel, after a long pause, turned to look at him and said: “Sorry, old boy. But there it is. Bad luck. My poor old Moult,” said the Colonel with a break in his voice. “Well — there it is.”

Alleyn said: “Do I take it that you all suppose one of the servants is responsible?”

They moved just enough to look at him.

“We mustn’t lose our common sense, you know, Alleyn,” said the Colonel. “A man’s record is always the best guide. You may depend upon it.”

“Uncle Flea, I wish I could think you’re wrong.”

“I know, old boy. I know you do.”

“The question is,” said Mrs. Forrester. “Which?”

Hilary threw up his hands and then buried his face in them.

“Nonsense!” said his aunt glancing at him. “Don’t playact, Hilary.”

“No, B! Not fair: He’s not play-acting. It’s a disappointment.”

“A bitter one,” said Hilary.

“Although,” his aunt went on, pursuing her own line of thought, “It’s more a matter of which isn’t guilty. Personally, I would think it’s a conspiracy involving the lot with the possible exception of the madman.” She turned her head slightly. “Is that the view of the police?” she asked, over her shoulder.

“No,” Alleyn said mildly.

“No! What do you mean, ‘No’?”

“No, I don’t think the servants conspired to murder Moult. I think that with the exception of Nigel they conspired to get rid of the body because they knew they would be suspected. It seems they were not far wrong. But of course it was an idiotic thing to do.”

“May I ask,” said Mrs. Forrester very loudly, “if you realize what this extraordinary theory implies? May I ask you that?”

“But of course,” Alleyn said politely. “Do, please. Ask.”

“It implies — ” she began on a high note and then appeared to boggle.

“There’s no need to spell it out, Aunt B.”

“— something perfectly ridiculous,” she barked. “I said, something perfectly ridiculous.”

Alleyn said, “I’m sorry to have to ask you this, sir, but there’s the matter of formal identification.”

Colonel Forrester said, “What? Oh! Oh, yes, of course. You — you want me to — to —”

“Unless there is a member of his family within call? There will presumably be relations who should be informed. Perhaps you can help us there? Who is the next-of-kin, do you know?”

This produced a strange reaction. For a moment Alleyn wondered if Colonel Forrester was going to have one of his “turns.” He became white and then red in the face. He looked everywhere but at Alleyn. He opened his mouth and then shut it again, half rose and sank back in his chair.

“He had no people,” he said at last, “that I know of. He — he has told me. There are none.”

“I see. Then, as his employer —”

“I’ll just get dressed,” the Colonel said and rose to his feet.

“No!” Mrs. Forrester interjected. She left the window and joined him. “You can’t, Fred. It’ll upset you. I can do it, I said I can do it.”

“Certainly not,” he said with an edge to his voice that evidently startled his wife and Hilary. “Please don’t interfere, B. I shall be ready in ten minutes, Alleyn.”

“Thank you very much, sir. I’ll join you in the hall.”

He opened the door for the Colonel who squared his shoulders, lifted his chin and walked out.

Alleyn said to Mrs. Forrester. “It can wait a little. There’s no need for him to come at once. If you think it will really upset him —”

“It doesn’t in the least matter what I think. He’s made up his mind,” she said and followed him out.

They hadn’t been able to make what Mr. Fox called a nice job of Moult’s body, owing to its being in an advanced state of rigor mortis. They had borrowed a sheet to cover it and had put it on a table in an old harness room. When Alleyn turned back the sheet Moult seemed to be frozen in the act of shaking his fist at the Colonel and uttering a soundless scream out of the head that was so grossly misplaced on its trunk.

Colonel Forrester said, “Yes,” and turned away. He walked past the constable on duty, into the yard, and blew his nose. Alleyn gave him a few moments and then joined him.

“Long time,” said the Colonel. “Twenty-five years. Quarter of a century. Long time.”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “It’s a rather special relationship — the officer, soldier-servant one — isn’t it?”

“He had his faults but we understood each other’s ways. We suited each other very well.”

“Come indoors, sir. It’s cold.”

“Thank you.”

Alleyn took him to the library where a fire had now been lit and sat him down by it.

“No need for it, really,” said the Colonel, making tremulous conversation, “with all this central heating ’Illy’s put in, but it’s cheerful, of course.” He held his elderly veined hands to the fire and finding them unsteady, rubbed them together.

“Shall I get you a drink?”

“What? No, no. No, thanks. I’m perfectly all right. It’s just — seeing him. Might have been killed in action. They often looked like that. Bit upsetting.”

“Yes.”

“I — there’ll be things to see to. I mean — you’ll want — formalities and all that.”

“I’m afraid so. There’ll be an inquest of course.”

“Of course.”

“Do you happen to know if he left a will?”

The hands were still and then, with a sudden jerk, the Colonel crossed his knees and clasped them in a travesty of ease.

“A will?” he said. “Not a great deal to leave, I daresay.”

“Still — if he did.”

“Yes, of course.” He seemed to think this over very carefully.

“You don’t know, then, if he did?”

“As a matter of fact,” the Colonel said in a constrained voice, “he gave me a — an envelope to keep for him. It may contain his will.”

“I think we shall probably ask to see it, Colonel. Of course if it’s irrelevant —”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he said. “I know. I know.”

“Is it,” Alleyn asked lightly, “perhaps in that famous uniform box?”

A long silence. “I — rather think so. It may be,” said the Colonel and then: “He has — he had the key. I told you, didn’t I? He looked after that sort of thing for us. Keys and things.”

“You placed an enormous trust in him, didn’t you?”

“Oh that!” said the Colonel dismissing it with a shaky wave of his hand. “Oh rather, yes. Absolutely.”

“I think I’ve recovered the key of the padlock.”

The Colonel gave Alleyn a long watery stare. “Have you?” he said at last. “From — him?”

“It was in his pocket.”

“May I have it, Alleyn?”

“Of course. But if you don’t mind we’ll do our routine nonsense with it first.”

“Fingerprints?” he asked faintly.

“Yes. It really is only routine. I expect to find none but his and your own, of course. We have to do these things.”

“Of course.”

“Colonel Forrester, what is it that’s worrying you? There is something, isn’t there?”

“Isn’t it enough,” he cried out with a kind of suppressed violence, “that I’ve lost an old and valued servant? Isn’t that enough?”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” said the Colonel at once. “My dear fellow, you must excuse me. I do apologize. I’m not quite myself.”

“Shall I tell Mrs. Forrester you’re in here?”

“No, no. No need for that. None in the world. Rather like to be by myself for a bit: that’s all. Thank you very much, Alleyn. Very considerate.”

“I’ll leave you, then.”

But before he could do so the door opened and in came Mr. Bert Smith, dressed but not shaved.

“I been talking to ’Illy,” he said without preliminaries, “and I don’t much fancy what I hear. You found ’im, then?”

“Yes.”

“Been knocked off? Bashed? Right?”

“Right.”

“And there was three of them convicted murderers trying to make away with the corpse. Right?”

“Right.”

“And you make out they got nothing to do with it?”

“I don’t think, at this stage, that it looks as if any of them killed him.”

“You got to be joking.”

“Have I?” said Alleyn.

Mr. Smith made a noise suggestive of contempt and disgust, and placed himself in front of the Colonel, who was leaning back in his chair frowning to himself.

“Glad to see you, Colonel,” said Mr. Smith. “It’s time we got together for a talk. ’Illy’s coming down when he’s broken the news to ’is loved one and collected ’is Auntie. Any objections?” he shot at Alleyn.

“Good Lord!” Alleyn said. “What possible objections could there be and how on earth could I enforce them? You can hold meetings all over the house if you feel so disposed. I only hope a bit of hog-sense comes out of them. If it does I’ll be glad if you’ll pass it on. We could do with it.”

“Honestly,” said Mr. Smith sourly, “you devastate me.”

Hilary came in with Mrs. Forrester and Cressida, who was en negligée and looked beautiful but woebegone. The other two were dressed.

Mrs. Forrester gave her husband a sharp look and sat beside him. He nodded as if, Alleyn thought, to reassure her and stave off any conversation. Hilary glanced unhappily at Alleyn and stood before the fire. Cressida approached Alleyn, gazed into his face, made a complicated, piteous gesture and shook her lovely head slowly from side to side after the manner of a motion-picture star attempting the ineffable in close-up.

“I can’t cope,” she said. “I mean I just can’t. You know?”

“You don’t really have to,” he said.

An expression that might have been the prelude to a grin dawned for a moment. “Well, actually I don’t, do I?” said Cressida. “Still, admit — it’s all a pretty good drag, isn’t it?”

She gave him another extremely matey look and then, in her usual fashion collapsed superbly into a chair.

Smith, Mrs. Forrester and even Hilary stared at her with unmistakable disfavour, Colonel Forrester with a kind of tender bewilderment.

“Cressy, my dear!” he mildly protested.

And at that an astonishing change came about in Cressida. Her eyes filled with tears, her mouth quivered and she beat with her pretty clenched fists on the arms of her chair. “All right, you lot,” she stammered. “I know what you’re thinking: how hard and mod and ghastly I’m being. All right. I don’t drip round making sorry-he’s-dead noises. That doesn’t mean I don’t mind. I do. I liked him — Moult. He was nice to me. You’ve all seen death, haven’t you? I hadn’t. Not ever. Not until I looked out of my window this morning and saw them putting it in a car, face up and awful. You needn’t say anything, any of you. No, Hilly, not even you — not yet. You’re old, old, all of you and you don’t get it. That’s all. Crack ahead with your meeting, for God’s sake.”

They stared at each other in consternation. Cressida beat on the arms of her chair and said, “Damn! I won’t bloody cry. I won’t.”

Hilary said, “Darling —” but she stamped with both feet and he stopped. Smith muttered something that sounded like “does you credit, love,” and cleared his throat.

Mrs. Forrester said: “I collect, Smith, that ludicrous as it sounds, you wish to hold some sort of meeting. Why don’t you do it?”

“Give us a chance,” he said resentfully.

Alleyn said, “I’m afraid I’m the stumbling block. I’ll leave you to it in a moment.”

Colonel Forrester, with something of an effort, got to his feet.

“Ask you to excuse me,” he said to Smith. “I’m not much good at meetings. Never have been. If you’ll allow me, Hilly, I’ll just sit in your study till breakfast.”

“Fred —”

“No, B. I haven’t got one of my Turns. I simply would like a moment or two to myself, my dear.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No,” said the Colonel very firmly indeed. “Don’t fuss me, B. I prefer to be alone.” He went to the door, paused and looked at Cressida. She had her hand pressed to her mouth. “Unless,” the Colonel said gently, “you would care to join me, Cressy, presently. I think perhaps we’re both duffers at meetings, don’t you?”

She lifted her hand from her lips, sketched the gesture of blowing him a kiss, and contrived a smile. “I’ll come,” said Cressida. The Colonel nodded and left them. Alleyn opened the door for him. Before he could shut it again Mr. Fox appeared. Alleyn went out to him, pulling the door to. According to its habit it clicked and opened a few inches.

Fox rumbled at some length. Isolated words reached the listeners round the fire. “Finished… dressing-room… nothing… latent… urgent.”

Alleyn said, “Yes. All right. Tell the men to assemble in the stable yard. I want to speak to them. Tell Bailey and Thompson to leave the box out and the dressing-room unlocked. We’ve finished up there. Colonel Forrester will open the box when he’s ready to do so.”

“It’s an urgent phone call, Mr. Alleyn.”

“Yes. All right. I’ll take it. Away you go.”

He started off, clapped his hand to his waistcoat and said: “Damn, I forgot. The key of the box?”

“I’ve got it. Nothing for us, there.”

“Let the Colonel have it, then, will you, Fox?”

“Very good, sir.”

“I’ll take this call in the drawing-room. I’ll probably be some time over it. Carry on, Fox, will you? Collect the men outside at the back.”

“Certainly, sir,” Fox said.

Fox shut the library door and Alleyn went into the hall.

But he didn’t speak on the drawing-room, or any other, telephone. He ran upstairs two steps at a time, jolting discomfort to his left arm, and sought out his wife in their room.

“My love,” he said. “I want you to stay put. Here. And be a triple ape.”

“What on earth’s a triple ape?”

Alleyn rapidly touched her eyes, ears and lips.

“Oh,” she said flatly. “I see. And I don’t breathe either, I suppose.”

“There’s my girl. Now listen —”

He had not gone far with what he had to say before there was a knock on the door. At a nod from him, Troy called out, “Just a second. Who is it?”

The door opened a crack.

Fox whispered, “Me.”

Alleyn went to him. “Well?”

“Like a lamb,” said Fox, “to the slaughter.”