Tied Up in Tinsel

Eight — Moult

Before he went out into the night, Alleyn visited the study and found it deserted. He turned on all the lights, opened the window curtains, and left, locking the door behind him and putting the key in his pocket. He listened for a moment or two outside the library door and heard the drone of two male voices topped by Mr. Smith’s characteristic short bark of laughter. Then he joined Wrayburn, who waited in the great porch with four of his men and the two handlers with their dogs. They moved out into the open courtyard.

“Rain’s lifted,” Wraybuni shouted. It had spun itself into a thin, stinging drive. The noise out-of-doors was immense: a roar without definition as if all the trees at Halberds had been given voices with which to send themselves frantic. A confused sound of water mingled with this. There were whistles and occasional clashes as of metal objects that had been blown out of their places and clattered about wildly on their own account.

Nigel’s monument was dissolving into oblivion. The recumbent figure, still recognizable, was horridly mutilated.

They rounded the front of the east wing, and turned right into the full venom of the wind.

The library windows were curtained and emitted only thin blades of light, and the breakfast-room was in darkness. But from the study a flood of lamplight caught the sapling fir, lashing itself to and fro distractedly, and the heaps of indeterminate rubble that surrounded it. Broken glass, cleaned by the rain, refracted the light confusedly.

Their faces were whipped by the wind, intermittent shafts of rain, and pieces of blown litter. The men had powerful search-lamps and played them over the area. They met at the discarded Christmas tree from which tatters of golden tinsel madly streamed. They searched the great heaps of rubble and patches of nettle and docks. They found, all over the place, evidence of Hilary’s men with their forks and shovels and trampling boots. They explored the sapling fir and remained, focussed on it, while Alleyn with his back to the wind peered up into the branches. He saw, as he had already seen from the dressing-room window, that the tender ones were bent into uncouth positions. He actually found, in a patch of loamy earth beneath the study window, prints of Hilary’s smart shoes where he had climbed over the sill to retrieve the poker.

He took a light, moved up to the tree, and searched its inward parts. After a minute or two he called to one of the men and asked him to hold the light steady as it was. He had to yell into the man’s ear, so boisterous was the roar of the wind.

The man took the light and Alleyn began to climb the tree. He kept as close as he could to the trunk where the young boughs were strongest. Wet pine needles brushed his face. Cascades of snow fell about his neck and shoulders. Branches slapped at him and he felt resin sticking to his hands. As he climbed, the tree swayed, he with it, and the light moved. He shifted round the trunk and hauled himself upward.

Suddenly an oblong sliver of fresh light appeared below and to his right. There was Hilary Bill-Tasman’s face, upturned and staring at Alleyn. He had come to the library window.

Cursing, Alleyn grasped the now slender trunk with his left hand, leant outward, and looked up. Dislodged snow fell into his face.

There it was. He reached up with his right hand, touched it, made a final effort and secured it. His fingers were so cold that he could scarcely feel sure of his capture. He put it in his mouth, and slithering, swaying and scrambling, came down to earth.

He moved round until the tree was between him and the library window and warmed his hands at the lamp. Wrayburn, standing close by, said something Alleyn could not catch and jerked his thumb in the direction of the library. Alleyn nodded, groped in his mouth and extracted a slender strip of metallic gold. He opened his mackintosh and tucked it away in the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Come indoors,” he signalled.

They had moved away and were heading back to the front of the house when they were caught in the beams of two lights. Above the general racket and clamour they heard themselves hailed.

The lights jerked, swayed and intensified as they approached. The men behind them suddenly plunged into the group. Alleyn shone his torch into their excited faces.

“What’s up?” Wrayburn shouted. “Here? What’s all the excitement?”

“We’ve found ’im, Mr. Wrayburn, we’ve seen ’im! We’ve got ’im.”

“Where?”

“Laying on the hillside, up yonder. I left my mate to see to ’im.”

“Which hillside?” Alleyn bawled.

“Acrost there, sir. On the way to the Vale road.”

“Come on, then,” said Wrayburn excitedly.

The whole party set off along the cinder path that Troy so often had taken on her afternoon walks.

They had not gone far before they saw a stationary light and a recumbent figure clearly visible spread-eagled and face down in the snow. Someone was stooping over it. As they drew near the stooping figure rose and began to kick the recumbent one.

“My God!” Wrayburn roared out, “what’s he doing! My God! Is he mad! Stop him.”

He turned to Alleyn and found him doubled up.

The man on the hillside, caught in his own torchlight, gave two or three more tentative kicks to the prostrate form and then, with an obvious effort, administered a brief and mighty punt that sent it careering into the gale. It gesticulated wildly and disintegrated. Wisps of rank, wet straw were blown into their faces.

Hilary would have to find another scarecrow.

A further ill-tempered, protracted and exhaustive search turned out to be useless, and at five minutes past twelve they returned to the house.

The rest of the search party had come in with nothing to report. They all piled up a shining heap of wet gear and lamps in the porch, left the two dogs in the unfurnished east-wing cloakroom, and in their stockinged feet entered the hall. The overefficient central heating of Halberds received them like a Turkish bath.

Hilary, under a hard drive of hospitality, came fussing out from the direction of the library. He was full of commiseration and gazed anxiously into one frozen face after another, constantly turning to Alleyn as if to call witness to his own distress.

“Into the dining-room! Everybody. Do do do do,” cried Hilary, dodging about like a sheepdog. And, rather sheepishly, the search party allowed itself to be mustered.

The dining-room table displayed a cold collation that would have done honour to Dingley Dell. On a side table was ranked an assembly of bottles: whisky, rum, brandy, Alleyn saw, and a steaming kettle. If Hilary had known how, Alleyn felt, he would have set about brewing a punch bowl. As it was, he implored Wrayburn to superintend the drinks and set himself to piling up a wild selection of cold meats on plates.

None of the servants appeared at this feast.

Mr. Smith came in, however, and looked on with his customary air of sardonic amusement and sharp appraisal. Particularly, Alleyn thought, did Mr. Smith observe his adopted nephew. What did he make of Hilary and his antics? Was there a kind of ironic affection, an exasperation at Hilary’s mannerisms and — surely? — an underlying anxiety? Hilary made a particularly effusive foray upon Wrayburn and a group of disconcerted subordinates, who stopped chewing and stared at their socks. Mr. Smith caught Alleyn’s eye and winked.

The dining-room became redolent of exotic smells.

Presently Wrayburn made his way to Alleyn.

“Will it be all right, now,” he asked, “if I get these chaps moving? The stream’s coming down very fresh and we don’t want to be marooned, do we?”

“Of course you don’t. I hope my lot get through all right.”

“When do you expect them?”

“I should think by daylight. They’re driving through the night. They’ll look in at the station.”

“If they’re short on waders,” said Wrayburn, “we can fix them up. They may need them.” He cleared his throat and addressed his troops: “Well, now. Chaps.”

Hilary was effusive in farewells, and at one moment seemed to totter on the brink of a speech but caught sight of Mr. Smith and refrained.

Alleyn saw the men off. He thanked them for their work and told them he’d have been very happy to have carried on with their help and might even be obliged to call on them again though he was sure they hoped not. They made embarrassed but gratified noises, and he watched them climb into their shining gear and file off in the direction of the vans that had brought them.

Wrayburn lingered. “Well,” he said. “So long, then. Been quite a pleasure.”

“Of a sort?”

“Well—”

“I’ll keep in touch.”

“Hope things work out,” Wrayburn said. “I used to think at one time of getting out of the uniformed branch but — I dunno — it didn’t pan out that way. But I’ve enjoyed this opportunity. Know what I mean?”

“I think so.”

“Look. Before I go. Do you mind telling me what it was you fished out of that tree?”

“Of course I don’t mind, Jack. There just hasn’t been the opportunity.”

Alleyn reached into his breast pocket and produced, between finger and thumb, the golden strand. Wrayburn peered at it. “We saw it from the dressing room window,” Alleyn said.

“Metallic,” Wrayburn said. “But not tinsel. Now what would that be? A bit of some ornamental stuff blown off the Christmas tree into the fir?”

“It was on the wrong side of the fir for that. It looks more like a shred of dress material to me.”

“It may have been there for some time.”

“Yes, of course. What does it remind you of?”

“By gum!” Wrayburn said. “Yes — by gum. Here! Are you going to look?”

“Care to keep your troops waiting?”

“What do you think!”

“Come on, then.”

They unlocked the cloakroom door and went in. Again the smell of makeup, the wig on its improvised stand, the fur-topped boot, the marks on the carpet, the cardboard carton with the poker inside and, on its coat hanger against the wall, the golden lamé robe of the Druid.

Alleyn turned it on its coat hanger and once again displayed the wet and frayed back of the collar. He held his shred of material against it.

“Might be,” he said. “It’s so small one can’t say. It’s a laboratory job. But could be.”

He began to explore the robe, inch by inch. He hunted back and front and then turned it inside out.

“It’s damp, of course, and wet at the bottom edge. As one would expect, from galloping about in the open courtyard. The hem’s come unstitched here and ravelled out. Zips right down the back. Hullo! The collar’s come slightly adrift. Frayed. Might be. Could be.”

“Yes, but — look, it’d be ridiculous. It doesn’t add up. Not by any reckoning. The thing’s here. In the cloakroom. When he was knocked off, if he was knocked off, he wasn’t wearing it. He couldn’t have been. Unless,” said Wrayburn, “it was taken off his body and returned to this room, but that’s absurd. What a muck it’d be in!”

“Yes,” Alleyn agreed absently. “It would, wouldn’t it?”

He had stooped down and was peering under the makeup bench. He pulled out a cardboard box that had been used for rubbish and put it on the bench.

“Absorbent tissues,” he said, exploring the contents. “A chunk of rag. Wrapping paper and — hullo, what’s this.”

Very gingerly he lifted out two pads of cotton wool about the shape of a medium-sized mushroom.

“Wet,” he said and bent over them. “No smell. Pulled off that roll there by the powder box. But what for? What the devil for?”

“Clean off the makeup?” Wrayburn hazarded.

“They’re not discoloured. Only wettish. Odd!”

“I’d better not keep those chaps waiting,” Wrayburn said wistfully. “It’s been a pleasure, by and large. Made a change. Back to routine, now. Good luck, anyway.”

They shook hands and he left. Alleyn cut himself a sample of gold lamé from the hem of the robe.

He had a final look round and then locked the cloakroom. Reminded by this action of the study, he crossed the hall into the east-wing corridor, unlocked the door, and turned out the lights.

As he returned, the library door at the far end of the corridor opened and Mr. Smith came out. He checked for a moment on seeing Alleyn, and then made an arresting gesture with the palm of his hand as if he were on point duty.

Alleyn waited for him by the double doors into the hall. Mr. Smith took him by the elbow and piloted him through. The hall was lit by two dying fires and a single standard lamp below the gallery and near the foot of the right-hand stairway.

“You’re up late,” Alleyn said.

“What about yourself?” he rejoined. “Matter of fact, I thought I’d like a word with you if that’s in order. ’Illy’s gone up to bed. How about a nightcap?”

“Thanks very much, but no. Don’t let me stop you, though.”

“I won’t bother. I’ve had my lot and there’s still my barley water to come. Though after that little how-d’ye-do the other night the mere idea tends to turn me up in advance.”

“There’s been no more soap?”

“I should bloody well hope not,” said Mr. Smith.

He walked up to the nearest hearth and kicked its smouldering logs together. “Spare a moment?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“If I was to ask you what’s your opinion of this turn-up,” he said. “I suppose I’d get what they call a dusty answer, would’n I?”

“In the sense that I haven’t yet formed an opinion, I suppose you would.”

“You telling me you don’t know what to think?”

“Pretty much. I’m collecting.”

“What’s that mean?”

“You’ve been a collector and a very successful one, haven’t you, Mr. Smith?”

“What of it?”

“There must have been times in your early days, when you had a mass of objects in stock on which you couldn’t put a knowledgeable value. Some of them might be rubbish and some might be important. In all the clutter of a job lot there might be one or two authentic pieces. But in those days I daresay you couldn’t for the life of you tell which was which.”

“All right. All right. You’ve made your point, chum.”

“Rather pompously, I’m afraid.”

“I wouldn’t say so. But I tell you what. I pretty soon learned in my trade to take a shine on the buyer and seller even when I only had an instinct for good stuff. And I always had that, I always had a flare. You ask ’Illy. Even then I could pick if I was having a stroke pulled on me.”

Alleyn had taken out his pipe and was filling it. “Is that what you want to tell me, Mr. Smith?” he asked. “Do you think someone’s pulling a stroke on me?”

“I don’t say that. They may be, but I don’t say so. No, my idea is that it must come in handy in your job to know what sort of characters you’re dealing with. Right?”

“Are you offering,” Alleyn said lightly, “to give me a breakdown on the inhabitants of Halberds?”

“That’s your definition, not mine. All right, I’m thinking of personalities. Like I said. Character. I’d of thought in your line, character would be a big consideration.”

Alleyn fished out a glowing clinker with the fire-tongs. “It depends,” he said, lighting his pipe. “We deal in hard, bumpy facts and they can be stumbling blocks in the path of apparent character. People, to coin a bromide, can be amazingly contradictory.” He looked at Mr. Smith. “All the same, if you’re going to give me an expert’s opinion on—” he waved his hand “— on the collection here assembled, I’ll be very interested.”

There was no immediate answer. Alleyn looked at Mr. Smith and wondered if he were to define his impression in one word, what that word would be. “Sharp”? “Cagey”? “Inscrutable”? In the bald head with streaks of black hair trained across it, the small bright eyes and compressed lips, he found a predatory character. A hard man. But was that hindsight? What would he have made of Mr. Smith if he’d known nothing about him?

“I assure you,” he repeated, “I’ll be very interested,” and sat down in one of two great porter’s chairs that flanked the fireplace.

Mr. Smith stared at him pretty fixedly. He took out his cigar case, helped himself, and sat in the other chair. To anyone coming into the hall and seeing them, they would have looked like subjects for a Christmas Annual illustration called “The Cronies.”

Mr. Smith cut his cigar, removed the band, employed a gold lighter, emitted smoke, and contemplated it. “For a start,” he said. “I was fond of Alf Moult.”

It was a curious little story of an odd acquaintanceship. Mr. Smith knew Moult when Hilary was a young man living with the Forresters in Hans Place. The old feud had long ago died out and Mr. Smith made regular visits to luncheon on Sundays. Sometimes he would arrive early before the Forresters had returned from church, and Moult would show him into the Colonel’s study. At first Moult was very standoffish, having a profound mistrust of persons of his own class who had hauled themselves up by their bootstraps. Gradually, however, this prejudice was watered down if never entirely obliterated, and an alliance was formed: grudging, Alleyn gathered, on Moult’s part but cordial on Mr. Smith’s. He became somebody with whom Moult could gossip. And gossip he did, though never about the Colonel, to whom he was perfectly devoted.

He would talk darkly about unnamed persons who exploited the Colonel, about tradesmen’s perfidy and the beastliness of female servants of whom he was palpably jealous.

“By and large,” said Mr. Smith, “he was a jealous kind of bloke.” And waited for comment.

“Did he object to the adopted nephew under that heading?”

“To ’Illy? Well — kind of sniffy on personal lines, like he made work about the place and was late for meals. That style of thing.”

“He didn’t resent him?”

Mr. Smith said quickly, “No more than he did anybody else that interfered with routine. He was a caution on routine, was Alf. ’Course he knew I wouldn’t —” He hesitated.

“Wouldn’t?” Alleyn prompted.

“Wouldn’t listen to anything against the boy,” said Mr. Smith shortly.

“How about Miss Tottenham? How did she fit in with Moult’s temperament?”

“The glamour girl? I’m talking about twenty years ago. She was — what? — three? I never see ’er, but they talked about ’er. She was being brought up by some posh family what was down on its uppers and needed the cash. Proper class lot. Alf used to rave about ’er and I will say the result bears ’im out.” The unelevating shadow of a leer slipped over Mr. Smith’s face and slid away again. “Bit of all right,” he said.

“Has Moult ever expressed an opinion about the engagement?”

“He’s human. Or was, which ever it is, poor bloke. He made out ’Illy was a very, very lucky man. Raved about ’er, Alf did, like I said, and wouldn’t hear a word to the contrary. That was because the Colonel took an interest in ’er and nothing the Colonel did was wrong in Alf’s book. And it seems ’er old pot was killed saving the Colonel’s life, which would make ’im a bleedin’ ’ero. So there you were.”

“You approve of the engagement?”

“It’s not official yet, is it? Oh, yes. ’Illy’s a good picker. You know. In the trade or out of it. Knows a nice piece when ’e sees one. She may be pushing the spoilt beauty bit now but he knows the answers to that one and no error. Oh, yes,” Mr. Smith repeated, quizzing the top of his cigar. “I know about the Bill-Tasman image. Funny. Vague. Eccentric. Comes in nice and handy that lot, more ways than one. But ’e won’t stand for any funny business, don’t worry, in work or pleasure. She’ll ’ave to be a good girl and I reckon she knows it.”

Alleyn waited for a moment and then said: “I see no reason why I shouldn’t tell you this. There’s a theory in circulation that Moult was responsible for the practical jokes, if they can be so called.”

Mr. Smith became vociferous. “Don’t give me that one, chum,” he said. “That’s just silly, that is. Alf Moult put soap in my barley water? Not on your nelly. Him and me was pals, wasn’t we? Right? Well, then: arst yourself.”

“He didn’t like the staff here, did he?”

“ ’Course ’e didn’t. Thought they was shockers and so they are. That lot! But that’s not to say ’e’d try to put their pot on, writing silly messages and playing daft tricks. Alf Moult! Do me a favour!”

“You may not have heard,” Alleyn said, “of all the other incidents. A booby-trap, in the Mervyn manner, set for my wife.”

“Hullo-ullo! I thought there was something there.”

“Did you? There was a much nastier performance this evening. After Nigel went his rounds and before Colonel Forrester went to bed, somebody wedged the window in their room. The strain of trying to open it brought on an attack.”

“There you are! Poor old Colonel. Another turn! And that wasn’t done by Alf Moult, was it!”

“Who would you think was responsible?”

“Nigel. Simple.”

“No. Not Nigel, Mr. Smith. Nigel shut the window when I was in the room and then ran downstairs bellowing about his own troubles.”

“Came back, then.”

“I don’t think so. There’s too narrow a margin in time. Of course we’ll want to know who was in that part of the house just then. And if anyone can —”

“ ‘Help the police,’ ” Mr. Smith nastily suggested, “ ‘in the execution of their duty.’ ”

“Quite so.”

“I can’t. I was in the library with ’Illy.”

“All the evening?”

“All the evening.”

“I see.”

“Look! This carry-on — notes and soap and booby-traps — brainless, innit? Nobody at home where it come from. Right? So where’s the type that fits—? Only one in this establishment and he’s the one with the opportunity? Never mind the wedge. That may be different. It’s obvious.”

“Nigel?”

“That’s right! Must be. Mr. Flippin’ Nigel. In and out of the princely apart-e-mongs all day. Dropping notes and mixing soapy nightcaps.”

“We’ll find out about the wedge.”

“You will?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Here! You think you know who done it? Don’t you? Well — do you?”

“I’ve got an idea.”

“Innit marvellous?” said Mr. Smith. “Blimey, innit blinkin’ marvellous!”

“Mr. Smith,” Alleyn said, “tell me something. Why do you go to such pains to preserve your original turn of speech? If it is your original style. Or is it — I hope you’ll excuse this — a sort of embellishment? To show us there’s no nonsense about Bert Smith? Do forgive me — it’s nothing whatever to do with the matter in hand. I’ve no right to ask you, but it puzzles me.”

“Look,” said Mr. Smith, “you’re a peculiar kind of copper, aren’t you? What’s your game. What are you on about? Christ, you’re peculiar!”

“There! You are offended. I’m sorry.”

“Who says I’m offended? I never said so, did I? All right, all right, Professor ’Iggins, you got it second time. Put it like this. I see plenty of fakes in our business, don’t I? Junk tarted up to look like class? And I see plenty of characters who’ve got to the top same way as I did: from the bottom. But with them it’s putting on the class. Talking posh. Plums in their gullets. Deceiving nobody but themselves. ‘Educated privately’ in Who’s Who and coming a gutser when they loose their cool and forget themselves. Not for mine. I’m me. Born Deptford, Ejjercation, where I could pick it up. Out of the gutter mostly. Me.” He waited for a moment and then, with an indescribably sly glance at Alleyn, said ruefully, “Trouble is, I’ve lost touch. I’m not contemp’ry. I’m mixing with the wrong sort and it’s a kind of struggle to keep the old flag flying, if you can understand. P’raps I’m what they call an inverted snob. Right?”

“Yes,” Alleyn said. “That may be it. It’s an understandable foible. And we all have our affectations, don’t we?”

“It’s not a bloody affectation,” Mr. Smith shouted and then with another of his terribly prescient glances: “And it works,” he said. “It rings the bell, don’ it? They tell you George V took a shiner to Jimmy Thomas, don’t they? Why? Because he was Jimmy Thomas and no beg yer pardons. If ’e forgot ’imself and left an aitch in, ’e went back and dropped it. Fact!” Mr. Smith stood up and yawned like a chasm. “Well, if you’ve finished putting the screws on me,” he said, “I think I’ll toddle. I intended going back tomorrow, but if this weather keeps up I might alter me plans. So long as the telephone lines are in business, so am I.”

He moved to the foot of the stairs and looked back at Alleyn. “Save you the trouble of keeping obbo on me, if I stay put. Right?”

“Were you ever in the Force, Mr. Smith?”

“Me! A copper! Do me a favour!” said Mr. Smith and went chuckling up to bed.

Alone, Alleyn stood for a minute or two, staring at the moribund fire and listening to the night sounds of a great house. The outer doors were shut and barred and the curtains closed. The voice of the storm was transmitted only through vague soughing noises, distant rattling of shutters and an ambiguous mumbling that broke out intermittently in the chimneys. There were characteristic creaks and percussion-like cracks from the old woodwork and, a long way off, a sudden banging that Alleyn took to be a bout of indigestion in Hilary’s central-heating system. Then a passage of quiet.

He was accustomed and conditioned to irregular hours, frustrations, changes of plan and lack of sleep, but it did seem an unconscionable time since he landed in England that morning. Troy would be sound asleep, he expected, when he went upstairs.

Some change in the background of small noises caught his attention. A footfall in the gallery upstairs? What? He listened. Nothing. The gallery was in darkness but he remembered there was a time-button at the foot of each stairway and a number of switches controlling the lights in the hall. He moved away from the fireplace and towards the standard lamp near the right-hand flight of stairs and just under the gallery.

He paused, looking to see where the lamp could be switched off. He reached out his left arm towards it.

A totally unexpected blow can bring about a momentary dislocation of time. Alleyn, for a split second, was a boy of sixteen, hit on the right upper arm by the edge of a cricket bat. His brother George, having lost his temper, had taken a swipe at him. The blunted thump was as familiar as it was shocking.

With his right hand clapped to his arm, he looked down and saw at his feet, shards of pale green porcelain gaily patterned.

His arm, from being numb, began to hurt abominably. He thought, no, not broken, that would be too much, and found that with an effort he could close and open his hand and then, very painfully, slightly flex his elbow. He peered at the shards scattered round his feet and recognized the remains of the vase that stood on a little table in the gallery: a big and, he was sure, extremely valuable vase. No joy for Bill-Tasman, thought Alleyn.

The pain was settling into a sort of rhythm, horrid but endurable. He tried supporting his forearm inside his jacket as if in a sling. That would do for the present. He moved to the foot of the stairs. Something bolted down them, brushed past him, and shot into the shadows under the gallery. He heard a feline exclamation, a scratching and a thud. That was the green baize door, he thought.

A second later, from somewhere distant and above him, a woman screamed. He switched on the gallery lights and ran upstairs. His arm pounded with every step.

Cressida came galloping full tilt and flung herself at him. She grabbed his arms and he gave a yelp of pain.

“No!” Cressida babbled. “No! I can’t stand it. I won’t take it! I hate it. No, no, no!”

“For the love of Mike!” he said. “What is it? Pull yourself together.”

“Cats! They’re doing it on purpose. They want to get rid of me.”

He held her off with his right hand and felt her shake as if gripped by a rigor. She laughed and cried and clung to him most desperately.

“On my bed,” she gabbled. “It was on my bed. I woke up and touched it. By my face. They know! They hate me! You’ve got to help.”

He managed agonizingly to get hold of her wrists with both his hands and thought, “Well, no bones broken, I suppose, if I can do this.”

“All right,” he said. “Pipe down. It’s gone. It’s bolted. Now, please. No!” he added as she made a sort of abortive dive at his chest. “There isn’t time and it hurts. I’m sorry but you’d better just sit on the step and get hold of yourself. Good. That’s right. Now, please stay there.”

She crouched on the top step. She was clad in a short, diaphanous nightgown and looked like a pin-up girl adapted to some kind of sick comedy.

“I’m cold,” she chattered.

The check system on the stair lights cut out and they were in near darkness. Alleyn swore and groped for a wall-switch. At the same moment, like a well-timed cue in a French farce, the doors at the far ends of the gallery opened simultaneously, admitting a flood of light. Out came Troy, on the left hand, and Hilary on the right. A row of wall-lamps sprang to life.

“What in the name of Heaven—” Hilary began but Alleyn cut him short. “Cover her up,” he said, indicating Cressida. “She’s cold.”

“Cressida! Darling! But what with?” Hilary cried. He sat beside his fiancée on the top step and made an ineffectual attempt to enclose her within the folds of his own dressing gown. Troy ran back into the guest-room corridor and returned with an eiderdown counterpane. Voices and the closure of doors could be heard. Alleyn was briefly reminded of the arousing of the guests at Forres.

Mr. Smith and Mrs. Forrester arrived in that order, the former in trousers, shirt, braces and stocking feet, the latter in her sensible dressing gown and a woollen cap rather like a baby’s.

“Hilary!” she said on a rising note. “Your uncle and I are getting very tired of this sort of thing. It’s bad for your uncle. You will put a stop to it.”

“Auntie Bed, I assure you —”

“Missus!” said Mr. Smith, “you’re dead right. I’m with you all the way. Now! What about it, ’Illy?”

“I don’t know,” Hilary snapped, “anything. I don’t know what’s occurred or why Cressida’s sitting here in her nighty. And I don’t know why you all turn on me. I don’t like these upsets any more than you do. And how the devil, if you’ll forgive me, Aunt Bed, you can have the cheek to expect me to do something about anything when everything’s out of my hands, I do not comprehend.”

Upon this they all four looked indignantly at Alleyn.

“They’re as rum a job lot as I’ve picked up in many a long day’s night,” he thought and addressed himself to them.

“Please stay where you are,” he said. “I shan’t, I hope, keep you long. As you suggest, this incident must be cleared up, and I propose to do it. Miss Tottenham, are you feeling better? Do you want a drink?”

(“Darling! Do you?” urged Hilary.)

Cressida shuddered and shook her head.

“Right,” Alleyn said. “Then please tell me exactly what happened. You woke up, did you, and found a cat on your bed?”

“Its eyes! Two inches away! It was making that awful tumbling noise and doing its ghastly pounding bit. On me! On me! I smelt its fur. Like straw.”

“Yes. What did you do?”

“Do! I screamed.”

“After that?”

After that, it transpired, all hell was let loose. Cressida’s reaction set up an equally frenzied response. Her visitor tore round her room and cursed her. At some stage she turned on her bedside lamp, and revealed the cat glaring out from under the petticoats of her dressing table.

“Black-and-white?” Hilary asked. “Or tabby?”

“What the hell does it matter?”

“No, of course. No. I just wondered.”

“Black-and-white.”

“Smartypants, then,” Hilary muttered.

After the confrontation, it seemed, Cressida, on the verge of hysteria, had got off her bed, sidled to the door, opened it, and then thrown a pillow at Smartypants, who fled from the room. Cressida, greatly shaken, slammed the door, turned back to her bed, and was softly caressed round her ankles and shins.

She looked down and saw the second cat, Slyboots, the tabby, performing the tails-up brushing ceremony by which his species make themselves known.

Cressida had again screamed, this time at the top of her voice. She bolted down the corridor and into the gallery and Alleyn’s reluctant embrace.

Closely wrapped in her eiderdown, inadequately solaced by the distracted Hilary, she nodded her head up and down, her eyes like great damp pansies and her teeth still inclined to chatter.

“All right,” Alleyn said. “Two questions. How do you think the cats got into your room? When you visited Troy, did you leave your door open?”

Cressida had no idea.

“You do leave doors open, rather, my darling,” Hilary said, “don’t you?”

“That queen in the kitchen put them there. Out of spite. I know it.”

“Now, Cressida! Really!”

“Yes, he did! He’s got a thing about me. They all have. They’re jealous. They’re afraid I’m going to make changes. They’re trying to frighten me off.”

“Where,” Alleyn asked before Hilary could launch his protests, “is the second cat, now? Slyboots?”

“He was walking about the corridor,” Troy began and Cressida immediately began a sort of internal fight with her eiderdown cocoon. “It’s all right,” Troy said quickly. “He came into my room and I’ve shut the doors.”

“Do you swear that?”

“Yes, I do.”

“In Heaven’s name!” Mrs. Forrester ejaculated, “Why don’t you take her to bed, Hilary?”

“Really, Aunt B! Well, all right. Well, I will.”

“Give her a pill. She takes pills, of course. They all do. Your uncle mustn’t have any more upsets. I’m going back to him. Unless,” she said to Alleyn, “you want me.”

“No, do go. I hope he’s all right. Was he upset?”

“He woke up and said something about a fire engine. Good-morning, to you all,” snorted Mrs. Forrester and left them.

She had scarcely gone when Hilary himself uttered a stifled scream. He had risen and was leaning over the bannister. He pointed downwards like an accusing deity at a heap of broken porcelain lying near a standard lamp.

“God damn it!” Hilary said, “that’s my K’ang Hsi vase. Who the hell’s broken my K’ang Hsi vase!”

“Your K’ang Hsi vase,” Alleyn said mildly, “missed my head by a couple of inches.”

“What do you mean? Why do you stand there saying things with you arm in your chest like Napoleon Bonaparte?”

“My arm’s in my chest because the vase damn’ nearly broke it. It’s all right,” Alleyn said, catching Troy’s eye. “It didn’t.”

“Very choice piece, that,” Mr. Smith observed. “Famille verte. You bought it from Eichelbaum, didn’t you? Pity.”

“I should bloody well think it is a pity.”

“Insurance O.K.?”

“Naturally. And cold comfort that is, as you well know. The point is, who did it? Who knocked it over.” Hilary positively turned on his beloved. “Did you?” he demanded.

“I did not!” she shouted. “And don’t talk to me like that. It must have been the cat.”

“The cat! How the hell —”

“I must say,” Alleyn intervened, “a cat did come belting downstairs immediately afterwards.”

Hilary opened his mouth and shut it again. He looked at Cressida, who angrily confronted him, clutching her eider-down. “I’m sorry,” he said. “My darling. Forgive me. It was the shock. And it was one of our treasures.”

“I want to go to bed.”

“Yes, yes. Very well. I’ll take you.”

They left, Cressida waddling inside her coverlet.

“Oh dear!” said Mr. Smith. “The little rift what makes the music mute,” and pulled a dolorous face.

“Your room’s next to hers, isn’t it?” Alleyn said. “Did you hear any of this rumpus?”

“There’s her bathrom between. She’s got the class job on the northeast corner. Yes, I heard a bit of a how-d’yer-do but I thought she might be having the old slap-and-tickle with ’Illy. You know.”

“Quite.”

“But when she come screeching down the passage, I thought Hullo-ullo. So I come out. Gawd love us,” said Mr. Smith, “it’s a right balmy turn-out though, and no error. Good-night again.”

When he had gone Alleyn said, “Come out of retirement,” and Troy emerged from the background. “Your arm,” she said. “Rory, I’m not interfering, but your arm?”

With a creditable imitation of the Colonel, Alleyn said: “Don’t fuss me, my dear,” and put his right arm round his wife. “It’s a dirty great bruise, that’s all,” he said.

“Did somebody —?”

“I’ll have to look into the Pussyfoot theory and then, by Heaven, come hell or high water, we’ll go to bed.”

“I’ll leave you to it, shall I?”

“Please, my love. Before you do, though, there’s a question. From your bedroom window, after the party, and at midnight, you looked out and you saw Vincent come round the northeast corner of the house. He was wheeling a barrow and in the barrow was the Christmas tree. He dumped the tree under the Colonel’s dressing-room window. You saw him do it?”

“No. There was an inky-black shadow. I saw him coming, all right, along the path. It’s wide, you know. More like a rough drive. The shadow didn’t cover it. So along he came, clear as clear in the moonlight. Against the snowy background. And then he entered the shadow and I heard him tip the tree out. And then I came away from the window.”

“You didn’t see him leave?”

“No. It was chilly. I didn’t stay.”

“ ‘Clear as clear in the moonlight.’ From that window you can see all those earthworks and ongoings where they’re making a lake and a hillock?”

“Yes. Just out to the left.”

“Did you look, particularly, in that direction?”

“Yes. It was very beautiful. One could have abstracted something from it. The shapes were exciting.”

“Like a track across the snow leading into the distance?”

“Nothing as obvious as that. The whole field of snow — all the foreground — was quite unbroken.”

“Sure?”

“Quite sure. That’s what made it good as a subject.”

“Nothing like a wheel track and footprints anywhere to be seen? For instance?”

“Certainly not. Vincent had trundled round the house by the track and that was already tramped over.”

“Did you look out of your window again in the morning?”

“Yes, darling, I did. And there were no tracks anywhere across the snow. And I may add that after our telephone conversation, I went out of doors. I had a look at Nigel’s sculpture. It had been blurred by weathering, particularly on its windward side. Otherwise it was still in recognizable shape. I walked round the house past the drawing-room windows and had a look at last night’s ‘subject’ from that angle. No tracks anywhere on the snow. The paths round the house and the courtyard and driveway were trampled and muddy. The courtyard had been swept.”

“So nobody, during the night or morning, had gone near the earthworks.”

“Unless from the far side. Even then one would still have seen their tracks on the hillside.”

“And there had been no snowfall after midnight.”

“No. Only the north wind. The sky was still cloudless in the morning.”

“Yes. The Buster only blew up tonight. Thank you, my love. Leave me, now. I shan’t be long.”

“There isn’t—?”

“Well?”

“I suppose there isn’t anything I can do? Only stand and wait like those sickening angels?”

“I’ll tell you what you can do. You can fetch my small suitcase and go downstairs and collect every last bloody bit of Bill-Tasman’s famille verte. Don’t handle it any more than you can help. Hold the pieces by the edges, put them in the case, and bring them upstairs. I’ll be here. Will you do that?”

“Watch me.”

When she was established at her task he went to the table in the gallery where the vase had stood. He looked down and there, in aerial perspective, was the top of a standard lamp, a pool of light surrounding it, and within the pool, a pattern of porcelain shards, the top of Troy’s head, her shoulders, her knees and her long, thin hands moving delicately about the floor. She was directly underneath him.

A little table, Chinese, elegant but solid, stood against the gallery railing. The ebony pedestal on which the vase had rested was still in position. It had brought the base of the vase up to the level of the balustrade. Alleyn guessed that Hilary wished people in the hall to look up and see his lovely piece of famille verte gently signalling from above. As indeed it had signalled to him, much earlier in this long night. Before, he thought, it had hit him on the arm and then killed itself.

He turned on all the lights in the gallery and used a pocket torch that Wrayburn had lent him. He inspected the table, inch by inch, so meticulously that he was still at it when Troy, having finished her task, switched off the downstairs lamp and joined him.

“I suppose,” she said, “you’re looking for claw-marks.”

“Yes.”

“Found any?”

“Not yet. You go along. I’ve almost finished here. I’ll bring the case.”

And when, finally, just after Troy heard the stable clock strike one, he came to her, she knew it was not advisable to ask him if he had found any traces of Smartypants’s claws on the Chinese table.

Because clearly he had not.

Alleyn obeyed his own instructions to wake at three. He left Troy fast asleep and found his way through their bedroom, darkling, to his dressing-room, where he shaved and dipped his head in cold water. He looked out of his window. The moon was down but there were stars to be seen, raked across by flying cloud. The wind was still high but there was no rain. The Buster was clearing. He dressed painfully, dragging on thick sweaters and stuffing a cloth cap in his pocket.

He found his way by torchlight along the corridor, out to the gallery and downstairs. The hall was a lightless void except for widely separated red eyes where embers still glowed on the twin hearths. He moved from the foot of the stairs to the opening into the east-wing corridor and, turning left, walked along it till he came to the library.

The library, too, was virtually in darkness. The familiar reek of oil and turpentine made Alleyn feel as if he had walked into his wife’s studio. Had the portrait been taken out of seclusion and returned to the library?

He moved away from the door and was startled, as Troy had been before him, by the click of the latch as it reopened itself. He shut it again and gave it a hard shove.

His torchlight dodged about the room. Books, lamps, chair-backs, pictures, ornaments, showed up and vanished. Then he found the workbench and, at last, near it, Troy’s easel.

And now, Hilary started up out of the dark and stared at him.

As he came nearer to the portrait his beam of torchlight intensified and so did the liveliness of the painting. Troy was far from being a “representational” portrait painter. Rather she abstracted the essence of her subjects as if, Alleyn thought, she had worked with the elements of Hilary’s personality for her raw material and laid them out directly on the canvas.

What were those elements? What had she seen?

Well, of course, there was the slightly supercilious air which she had compared to that of a “good-looking camel.” And in addition elegance, fastidiousness, a certain insolence, a certain quirkiness. But, unexpectedly, in the emphasis on a groove running from his nostrils to the corners of his faunish mouth and in the surprising heaviness of the mouth itself, Troy had unveiled a hedonist in Hilary.

The library was the foremost room in the east wing and had three outside walls. Its windows on the left as one entered it, looked on to the great courtyard. Alleyn made his way to them. He knew they were curtained and shuttered.

He opened the curtains, exposed a window and opened that. It crossed his mind that windows played a major role in whatever drama was unfolding at Halberds. Now his torchlight shone on the inside aspect of the shutters. This was the lee side of the east wing, but they rattled slightly and let in blades of cold air. Not strong enough, he thought, to make a great disturbance in the room, but he returned to the easel and gingerly pushed it into a sheltered position.

Then he operated the sliding mechanism in the shutters. The louvres turned and admitted the outside world, its noise and its cold. Alleyn peered through one of the slits. There were no clouds left in the sky. Starlight made a non-darkness of the great courtyard and he could discern, quite close at hand, Nigel’s catafalque, denuded of all but a fragment of its effigy, a thin pock-marked mantle of snow.

He put on his cap, turned up the double collar of his sweater, like a beaver, over his mouth and ears, settled himself on the window-seat, and put out his torch.

“Keeping obbo,” he thought and wondered if Fox and his lot were well on their way. He could have done with a radio link. They might arrive at precisely the wrong moment. Not that, ultimately, it would make any difference.

When did the staff get up at Halberds? Sixish? Was he completely, ludicrously at fault? Waiting, as so often on the job, for a non-event?

After all, his theory, if it could be called a theory, was based on a single tenuous thread of evidence. Guesswork, almost. And he could have proved it right or wrong as soon as it entered his head. But then — no confrontation, no surprise element.

He went over the whole field of information as he had received it piecemeal from Troy, from the guests, from Hilary and from the staff. As far as motive went, a clotted mess of non-sequiturs, he thought. But as far as procedure went: that was another story. And the evidence in hand? A collection of imbecile pranks that might be threats. A disappearance. A man in a wig. A hair of the wig and probably the blood of the man on a poker. A scrap of gold in a discarded Christmas tree. A silly attempt upon a padlock. A wedge in a window-sash. A broken vase of great price and his own left arm biceps now thrumming away like fun. Mr. Smith’s junk yard in his horse-and-barrow days could scarcely have offered a more heterogeneous collection, thought Alleyn.

He reversed his position, turned up the collar of his jacket, and continued to peer through the open louvre. Icy blades of air made his eyes stream.

Over years of that soul-destroying non-activity known to the Force as keeping obbo, when the facility for razor-sharp perception must cut through the drag of bodily discomfort and boredom, Alleyn had developed a technique of self-discipline. He hunted through his memory for odd bits from his favourite author that, in however cockeyed a fashion, could be said to refer to his job. As: “O me! what eyes hath Love put in my head / which have no correspondence with true sight.” And: “Mad slanderers by mad ears believed he.” And: “Hence, thou suborn’d informer,” which came in very handy when some unreliable snout let the police-side down.

This frivolous pastime had led indirectly to the memorizing of certain sonnets. Now, when, with his eyes streaming and his arm giving him hell, he had embarked upon “The expense of spirit in a waste of shame,” he saw, through his peephole, a faint light.

It came jouncing across the courtyard and darted like a moth about the catafalque of Nigel’s fancy.

“Here, after all, we go,” thought Alleyn.

For a split second the light shone directly into his eyes and made him feel ludicrously exposed. It darted away to its original object and then to a slowly oncoming group out of some genre picture that had become blackened almost to oblivion by time. Two figures bent against the wind dragging at an invisible load.

It was a sledge. The torchlight concentrated on the ground beside the catafalque and into this area gloved hands and heavy boots shoved and manoeuvred a large, flat-topped sledge.

Alleyn changed his position on the window-seat. He squatted. He slid up the fastening device on the shutters and held them against the wind almost together but leaving a gap for observation.

Three men. The wind still made a great to-do, howling about the courtyard, but he could catch the sound of their voices. The torch, apparently with some bother, was planted where it shone on the side of the packing case. A figure moved across in the field of light: a man with a long-handled shovel.

Two pairs of hands grasped the top of the packing case. A voice said: “Heave.”

Alleyn let go the shutters. They swung in the wind and banged open against the outside wall. He stepped over the sill and flashed his own light.

Into the faces of Kittiwee and Mervyn and, across the top of the packing case, Vincent.

“You’re early to work,” said Alleyn.

There was no answer and no human movement. It was as if the living men were held inanimate at the centre of a boisterous void.

Kittiwee’s alto voice was heard. “Vince,” it said, “asked us to give him a hand, like. To clear.”

Silence. “That’s right,” said Vincent at last.

Mervyn said: “It’s no good now. Sir. Ruined. By the storm.”

“Quite an eyesore,” said Kittiwee.

“Nigel’s not giving a hand?” Alleyn said.

“We didn’t want to upset him,” Mervyn explained. “He’s easy upset.”

They had to shout these ridiculous observations against the noise of the gale. Alleyn moved round the group until he gently collided with something he recognized as one of the pillars supporting the entrance porch. He remembered that when Wrayburn’s men collected their gear from the porch, one of them had switched on the converted lanterns that adorned the pillars.

Alleyn kept his torchlight on the men. They turned to follow his progress, screwing up their eyes and sticking close together. His hand reached out to the end pillar and groped round it. He backed away and felt for the wall of the house.

“Why,” he called out, “didn’t you wait for the light for this job?”

They all began to shout at once and very confusedly. Scraps of unlikely information were offered: Hilary’s dislike of litter, Nigel’s extreme sensitivity about the fate of his masterpiece. It petered out.

Vince said: “Come on. Get moving,” and the pairs of gloved hands returned to the packing case.

Alleyn had found a switch. Suddenly the porch and the courtyard were there to be seen: all lit up as they had been for Hilary’s party.

The drama of darkness, flashing lights and half-seen ambiguous figures was gone. Three heavily clad men stood round a packing case and glowered at a fourth man.

Alleyn said: “Before you take it away, I want to see inside that thing.”

“There’s nothing in it,” Kittiwee shrilly announced, and at the same time Vincent said, “It’s nailed up. You can’t.”

Mervyn said: “It’s just an old packing case, sir. The pianna come in it. It’s got a lot of rubbish inside thrown out for disposal.”

“Fair enough,” Alleyn said. “I want to look at it, if you please.”

He walked up to them. The three men crowded together in front of the case. “God!” he thought. “How irremediably pitiable and squalid.”

He saw that each of them was using the others, hopelessly, as some sort of protection for himself. They had a need to touch each other, to lose their separate identities, to congeal.

He said, “This is no good, you know. You’ll only harm yourselves if you take this line. I must see inside the case.”

Like a frightened child making a show of defiance, Kittiwee said, “We won’t let you. We’re three to one. You better watch out.”

Mervyn said, “Look, sir, don’t. It won’t do you any good. Don’t.”

And Vincent, visibly trembling: “You’re asking for trouble. You better not. You didn’t ought to take us on.” His voice skipped a register. “I’m warning you,” he squeaked. “See? I’m warning you.”

“Vince!” Kittiwee said. “Shut up.”

Alleyn walked up to them and in unison they bent their knees and hunched their shoulders in a travesty of squaring up to him.

“The very worst thing you could do,” he said, “would be to attack me. Think!”

“Oh Gawd!” Kittiwee said. “Oh Gawd, Gawd, Gawd.”

“Stand aside, now. And if you knock me over the head and try the same game with another job, you’ll come to worse grief. You must know that. Come, now.”

Vincent made an indeterminate gesture with his shovel. Alleyn took three steps forward and ducked. The shovel whistled over his head and was transfixed in the side of the packing case.

Vincent stared at him with his mouth open and his fingers at his lips. “My oath, you’re quick!” he said.

“Lucky for you, I am,” Alleyn said. “You bloody fool, man! Why do you want to pile up trouble for yourself? Now stand away, the lot of you. Go on, stand back.”

“Vincey!” Kittiwee said in scandalized tones. “You might of cut his head off!”

“I’m that upset.”

“Come on,” Mervyn ordered them. “Do like ’e says. It’s no good.”

They stood clear.

The case was not nailed up. It was hinged at the foot and fastened with hook-and-eye catches at the top. They were very stiff and Alleyn could use only one hand. He wrenched the shovel from its anchorage and saying, “Don’t you try that again,” dropped it to the ground at his feet.

He forced open the first two catches and the side gaped a little, putting a strain on the remaining one. He struck at it with the heel of his hand. It resisted and then flew up.

The side of the case fell against him. He stepped back and it crashed on the paved courtyard.

Moult, having laid against it, rolled over and turned his sightless gaze on Alleyn.