Black As He's Painted

by Ngaio Marsh

  For a moment he fancied he saw signs of withdrawal but if so they vanished at once. The Boomer waved his paw.

  ‘Of course. Of course. But, my dear Rory, you will not understand a word of it.’

  ‘Do you know Sam Whipplestone? Of the FO and lately retired?’

  ‘I know of him. Of course. He has had many connections with my country. We have not met until tonight. He was a guest. And he is present now with your Gibson. I couldn’t understand why.’

  ‘I asked him to come. He speaks your language fluently and he’s my personal friend. Would you allow him to sit in with me? I’d be very grateful’

  And now, Alleyn thought, he really was in for a rebuff – but no, after a disconcerting interval The Boomer said: ‘This is a little difficult. An enquiry of this nature is never open to persons who have no official standing. Our proceedings are never made public.’

  ‘I give you my firm undertaking that they wouldn’t be in this instance. Whipplestone is the soul of discretion, I can vouch for him.’

  ‘You can?’

  ‘I can and I do.’

  ‘Very well,’ said The Boomer. ‘But no Gibsons.’

  ‘All right. But why have you taken against poor Gibson?’

  ‘Why? I cannot say why. Perhaps because he is too large.’ The enormous Boomer pondered for a moment. ‘And so pale,’ he finally brought out. ‘He is very, very pale.’

  Alleyn said he believed the entire household was now assembled in the ballroom and The Boomer said that he would go there. Something in his manner made Alleyn think of a star actor preparing for his entrance.

  ‘It is perhaps a little awkward,’ The Boomer reflected. ‘On such an occasion I should be attended by my Ambassador and my personal mlinzi – my guard. But since the one is dead and the other possibly his murderer, it is not feasible.’

  ‘Tiresome for you.’

  ‘Shall we go?’

  They left, passing one of Gibson’s men in Costard’s livery. In the hall they found Mr Whipplestone, patient in a high-backed chair. The Boomer, evidently minded to do his thing properly, was extremely gracious. Mr Whipplestone offered perfectly phrased regrets for the Ambassador’s demise and The Boomer told him that the Ambassador had spoken warmly of him and had talked of asking him to tea.

  Gibson was nowhere to be seen but another of his men quietly passed Alleyn a folded paper. While Mr Whipplestone and The Boomer were still exchanging compliments, he had a quick look at it.

  ‘Found the gun,’ it read. ‘See you after.’

  IV

  The ballroom was shut up. Heavy curtains were drawn across the french windows. The chandeliers sparkled, the flowers were brilliant. Only a faint reek of champagne, sandarac and cigarette smoke suggested the aftermath of festivities.

  The ballroom had become Ng’ombwana.

  A crowd of Ng’ombwanans waited at the end of the great saloon where the red alcove displayed its warlike trophies.

  It was a larger assembly than Alleyn had expected: men in full evening dress whom he supposed to be authoritative persons in the household, a controller, a secretary, undersecretaries. There were some dozen men in livery and as many women with white head-scarves and dresses, and there was a knot of under-servants in white jackets clustered at the rear of the assembly. Clearly they were all grouped in conformance with the domestic hierarchy. The President’s aides-de-camp waited at the back of the dais. And ranked on each side of it, armed and immovable, was his guard in full ceremonial kit: scarlet tunics, white kilts, immaculate leggings, glistening accoutrements.

  And on the floor in front of the dais, was a massive table bearing under a lion’s hide the unmistakable shape of the shrouded dead.

  Alleyn and Mr Whipplestone entered in the wake of The Boomer. The guard came to attention, the crowd became very still. The Boomer walked slowly and superbly to his dais. He gave an order and two chairs were placed on the floor not far from the bier. He motioned Alleyn and Mr Whipplestone to take them. Alleyn would have greatly preferred an inconspicuous stand at the rear but there was no help for it and they took their places.

  ‘I daren’t write, dare I?’ Mr Whipplestone muttered. ‘And nor dare I talk.’

  ‘You’ll have to remember.’

  ‘All jolly fine.’

  The Boomer, seated in his great chair, his hands on the arms, his body upright, his chin raised, his knees and feet planted together, looked like an effigy of himself. His eyes, as always a little bloodshot, rolled and flashed, his teeth gleamed and he spoke in a language which seemed to be composed entirely of vowels, gutturals and clicks. His voice was so huge that Mr Whipplestone, trying to speak like a ventriloquist, ventured two words.

  ‘Describing incident,’ he said.

  The speech seemed to grow in urgency. He brought both palms down sharply on the arms of his chair. Alleyn wondered if he only imagined that a heightened tension invested the audience. A pause and then, unmistakably, an order.

  ‘Spear chap,’ ventriloquized Mr Whipplestone. ‘Fetch.’

  Two of the guards came smartly to attention, marched to meet each other, faced front, saluted, about-turned and marched out. Absolute stillness followed this proceeding. Sounds from outside could be heard. Gibson’s men in the garden, no doubt, and once, almost certainly, Gibson’s voice.

  When the silence had become very trying indeed, the soldiers returned with the spear-carrier between them.

  He was still dressed in his ceremonial garments. His anklets and armbands shone in the lamplight and so did his burnished body and limbs. But he’s not really black, Alleyn thought, ‘If Troy painted him he would be anything but black – blue, mole, purple, even red where his body reflects the carpet and walls.’ He was glossy. His close-cropped head sat above its tier of throat-rings like a huge ebony marble. He wore his lion’s skin like a lion. Alleyn noticed that his right arm was hooked under it as if in a sling.

  He walked between his guards to the bier. They left him there, isolated before his late Ambassador and his President and close enough to Alleyn and Mr Whipplestone for them to smell the sweet oil with which he had polished himself.

  The examination began. It was impossible most of the time for Alleyn to guess what was being said. Both men kept very still. Their teeth and eyes flashed from time to time but their big voices were level and they used no gesture until suddenly the spearman slapped the base of his own neck.

  ‘Chop,’ breathed Mr Whipplestone. ‘Karate. Sort of.’

  Soon after this there was a break and neither man spoke for perhaps eight seconds and then, to Alleyn’s surprise and discomfiture, The Boomer began to talk, still in the Ng’ombwanan tongue, to him. It was a shortish observation. At the end of it, The Boomer nodded to Mr Whipplestone who cleared his throat.

  ‘The President,’ he said, ‘directs me to ask you if you will give an account of what you yourself witnessed in the pavilion. He also directs me to translate what you say as he wishes the proceedings to be conducted throughout in the Ng’ombwanan language.’

  They stood up. Alleyn gave his account, to which The Boomer reacted as if he hadn’t understood a word of it. Mr Whipplestone translated.

  Maintaining this laborious procedure, Alleyn was asked if, after the death had been discovered, he had formed any opinions as to whether the spearman was, in fact, injured.

  Looking at the superb being standing there like a rock, it was difficult to imagine that a blow on the carotid nerve or anywhere else for that matter could cause him the smallest discomfiture. Alleyn said: ‘He was kneeling with his right hand in the position he has just shown. His head was bent, his left hand clenched and his shoulders hunched. He appeared to be in pain.’

  ‘And then,’ translated Mr Whipplestone, ‘what happened?’

  Alleyn repressed an insane desire to remind The Boomer that he was there at the time and invite him to come off it and talk English.

  He said: ‘There was a certain amount of confusion. This was checked by –’ he looked straigh
t at The Boomer – ‘the President, who spoke in Ng’ombwanan to the spearsman who appeared to offer some kind of statement or denial. Subsequently five men on duty from the Special Branch of the CID arrived with two of the President’s guard who had been stationed outside the pavilion. The spearsman was removed to the house.’

  Away went Mr Whipplestone again.

  The Boomer next wished to know if the police had obtained any evidence from the spear itself. Alleyn replied that no report had been released under that heading.

  This, apparently, ended his examination, if such it could be called. He sat down.

  After a further silence, and it occurred to Alleyn that the Ng’ombwanans were adepts in non-communication, The Boomer rose.

  It would have been impossible to say why the atmosphere, already far from relaxed, now became taut to twanging point. What happened was that the President pointed, with enormous authority, at the improvised bier and unmistakably pronounced a command.

  The spearsman, giving no sign of agitation, at once extended his left hand – the right was still concealed in his bosom – and drew down the covering. And here was the Ambassador, open-mouthed, goggle-eyed, making some sort of indecipherable declaration.

  The spearsman, laying his hand upon the body, spoke boldly and briefly. The President replied even more briefly. The lionskin mantle was replaced, and the ceremony – assembly – trial – whatever it might be, was at an end. At no time during the final proceedings had The Boomer so much as glanced at Alleyn.

  He now briefly harangued his hearers. Mr Whipplestone muttered that he ordered any of them who had any information, however trivial, bearing however slightly on the case, to speak immediately. This met with an absolute silence. His peroration was to the effect that he himself was in command of affairs at the Embassy. He then left. His ADCs followed and the one with whom Alleyn was acquainted paused by him to say the President requested his presence in the library.

  ‘I will come,’ Alleyn said, ‘in ten minutes. My compliments to the President, if you please.’

  The ADC rolled his eyes, said, ‘But –’, changed his mind and followed his Master.

  ‘That,’ said Mr Whipplestone, ‘was remarkably crisp.’

  ‘If he doesn’t like it he can lump it. I want a word with Gibson. Come on.’

  Gibson, looking sulky, and Fox, were waiting for them at their temporary quarters in the controller’s office. On the desk, lying on a damp unfolded handkerchief, was a gun. Thompson and Bailey stood nearby with their tools of trade.

  ‘Where?’ said Alleyn.

  ‘In the pond. We picked it up with a search lamp. Lying on the blue tiled bottom at the corner opposite the conveniences and three feet in from the margin.’

  ‘Easy chucking distance from the loo window.’

  ‘That’s correct.’

  ‘Anything?’ Alleyn asked Bailey.

  ‘No joy, Mr Alleyn. Gloves, I reckon.’

  ‘It’s a Luger,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘They are not hard to come by,’ Mr Whipplestone said, ‘in Ng’ombwana.’

  ‘You know,’ Alleyn said, ‘almost immediately after the shot, I heard something fall into the pond. It was in the split second before the rumpus broke out,’

  ‘Well, well,’ said Fox. ‘Not,’ he reasoned, ‘a very sensible way for him to carry on. However you look at it. Still,’ he said heavily, ‘that’s how they do tend to behave.’

  ‘Who do, Br’er Fox?’

  ‘Political assassins, the non-professionals. They’re a funny mob, by all accounts.’

  ‘You’re dead right there, Teddy,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘I suppose,’ he added, appealing to Alleyn, ‘we retain possession of this Luger, do we?’

  ‘Under the circumstances we’ll be lucky if we retain possession of our wits. I’m damned if I know. The whole thing gets more and more like a revival of the Goon Show.’

  ‘The AC, your department, rang.’

  ‘What’s he want?’

  ‘To say the Deputy Commissioner will be calling in to offer condolences or what have you to the President. And no doubt,’ said Gibson savagely, ‘to offer me his advice and congratulations on a successful operation. Christ!’ he said and turned his back on his colleagues.

  Alleyn and Fox exchanged a look.

  ‘You couldn’t have done more,’ Alleyn said after a moment. ‘Take the whole lay-out, you couldn’t have given any better coverage.’

  ‘That bloody sergeant in the bog.’

  ‘All right. But if Mrs Cockburn-Montfort’s got it straight the sergeant wouldn’t have stopped him in the dark, wherever she was.’

  ‘I told them. I told these bastards they shouldn’t have the blackout.’

  ‘But,’ said Fox, in his reasonable way, ‘the gun-man didn’t do the job anyway. There’s that aspect, Mr Gibson, isn’t there?’

  Gibson didn’t answer this. He turned round and said to Alleyn: ‘We’ve to find out if the President’s available to see the DC.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘He’s on his way in from Kent. Within the hour.’

  ‘I’ll find out.’ Alleyn turned to Mr Whipplestone. ‘I can’t tell you, Sam, how much obliged to you I am,’ he said, ‘If it’s not asking too much, could you bear to write out an account of that black – in both senses – charade in there, while it’s still fresh in your mind? I’m having another go at the great panjandrum in the library.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Mr Whipplestone. ‘I’d like to.’

  So he was settled down with writing materials and immediately took on the air of being at his own desk in his own rather rarefied office with a secretary in deferential attendance.

  ‘What’s horrible for us, Fred?’ Alleyn asked. It was a regulation inquiry for which he was known at the Yard.

  ‘We’ve got that lot from the tent party still waiting. Except the ones who obviously hadn’t a clue about anything. And,’ Gibson added a little awkwardly, ‘Mrs Alleyn. She’s gone, of course.’

  ‘I can always put her through the hoops at home.’

  ‘And – er, and er,’ said Gibson still more awkwardly, ‘there is – er – your brother.’

  ‘What!’ Alleyn shouted, ‘George! You don’t tell me you’ve got George sitting on his fat bottom waiting for the brutal police bit?’

  ‘Well –’

  ‘Mrs Alleyn and Sir George,’ said Fox demurely. ‘And we’re not allowed to mention coincidence.’

  ‘Old George,’ Alleyn pondered, ‘what a lark! Fox, you might press on with statements from that little lot. Including George. While I have another go at The Boomer. What about you, Fred?’

  ‘Get on with the bloody routine, I suppose. Could you lend me these two –’ he indicated Bailey and Thompson – ‘for the ladies’ conveniences? Not that there’s much chance of anything turning up there. Still, we’ve got this Luger-merchant roaming round somewhere in the establishment. We’re searching for the bullet, of course, and that’s no piece of cake. Seeing you,’ he said morosely and walked out.

  ‘You’d better get on with the loo,’ Alleyn said to Bailey and Thompson and himself returned to the library.

  V

  ‘Look,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s this way. You – Your Excellency – can, as of course you know, order us off whenever you feel like it. As far as inquiries inside the Embassy are concerned, we can become persona non grata at the drop of a hat and as such would have to limit our activities, of which you’ve no doubt formed an extremely poor opinion, to looking after your security whenever you leave these premises. We will also follow up any lines of enquiry that present themselves outside the Embassy. Quite simply, it’s a matter of whether or not you wish us to carry on as we are or make ourselves scarce. Colonel Sinclaire, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is on his way. He hopes he may be allowed to wait upon you. No doubt he will express his deep regrets and put the situation before you in more or less the same terms as I have used.’

  For the first time since they ha
d renewed their acquaintance Alleyn found a kind of hesitancy in The Boomer’s manner. He made as if to speak, checked himself, looked hard at Alleyn for a moment and then began to pace up and down the library with the magnificent action that really did recall clichés about caged panthers.

  At last he stopped in front of Alleyn and abruptly took him by the arms. ‘What,’ he demanded, ‘did you think of our enquiry? Tell me?’

  ‘It was immensely impressive,’ Alleyn said at once.

  ‘Yes? You found it so? But you think it strange, don’t you, that I who have eaten my dinners and practised my profession as a barrister, should subscribe to such a performance. After all, it was not much like the proceedings of the British Coroner’s Inquest?’

  ‘Not conspicuously like. No.’

  ‘No. And yet, my dear Rory, it told me a great deal more than would have been elicited by that highly respectable court’

  ‘Yes?’ Alleyn said politely. And with a half-smile: ‘Am I to know what it told Your Excellency?’

  ‘It told My Excellency that my nkuki mtu mwenye – my mlinzi – my man with the spear, spoke the truth.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘You are non-committal. You want to know how I know?’

  ‘If it suits you to tell me.’

  ‘I am,’ announced The Boomer, ‘the son of a paramount chief. My father and his and his, back into the dawn, were paramount chiefs. If this man, under oath to protect me, had been guilty of murdering an innocent and loyal servant he could not have uncovered the body before me and declared his innocence. Which is what he did. It would not be possible.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And you would reply that such evidence is not admissible in a British court-of-law.’

  ‘It would be admissible, I dare say. It could be eloquently pleaded by able counsel. It wouldn’t be accepted, ipso facto, as proof of innocence. But you know that as well as I do.’

  ‘Tell me this. It is important for me. Do you believe what I have said?’

  ‘I think I do,’ Alleyn said slowly. ‘You know your people. You tell me it is so. Yes. I’m not sure, but I am inclined to believe you are right.’