Black As He's Painted

by Ngaio Marsh

‘Ah!’ said The Boomer. ‘So now we are upon our old footing. That is good.’

  ‘But I must make it clear to you. Whatever I may or may not think has no bearing on the way I’ll conduct this investigation: either inside the Embassy, if you’ll have us here, or outside it. If there turns out to be cogent evidence, in our book, against this man, we’ll follow it up.’

  ‘In any case, the event having taken place in this Embassy, on his own soil, he could not be tried in England,’ said The Boomer.

  ‘No. Whatever we find, in that sense, is academic. He would be repatriated.’

  ‘And this person who fires off German weapons in ladies’ lavatories. You say he also is black.’

  ‘Mrs Cockburn-Montfort says so.’

  ‘A stupid woman.’

  ‘Tolerably so, I’d have thought.’

  ‘It would be better if her husband beat her occasionally and left her at home,’ said The Boomer with one of his gusts of laughter.

  ‘I should like to know, if it isn’t too distressing for you to speak of him, something of the Ambassador himself. Did you like him very much? Was he close to you? Those sorts of questions?’

  The Boomer dragged his great hand across his mouth, made a long rumbling sound in his chest and sat down.

  ‘I find it difficult,’ he said at last, ‘to answer your question. What sort of man was he? A fuddy-duddy, as we used to say. He has come up, in the English sense, through the ranks. The peasant class. At one time he was a nuisance. He saw himself staging some kind of coup. It was all rather ridiculous. He had certain administrative abilities but no real authority. That sort of person.’

  Disregarding this example of Ng’ombwanan snob-thinking, Alleyn remarked that the Ambassador must have been possessed of considerable ability to have got where he did. The Boomer waved a concessionary hand and said that the trend of development had favoured his advancement.

  ‘Had he enemies?’

  ‘My dear Rory, in an emergent nation like my own every man of authority has or has had enemies. I know of no specific persons.’

  ‘He was in a considerable taking-on about security during your visit,’ Alleyn ventured, to which The Boomer vaguely replied: ‘Oh. Did you think so?’

  ‘He telephoned Gibson and me on an average twice a day.’

  ‘Boring for you,’ said The Boomer in his best public school manner.

  ‘He was particularly agitated about the concert in the garden and the blackout. So were we for that matter.’

  ‘He was a fuss-pot,’ said The Boomer.

  ‘Well, damn it all, he had some cause, as it turns out.’

  The Boomer pursed his generous mouth into a double mulberry and raised his brows, ‘If you put it like that.’

  ‘After all, he is dead.’

  ‘True,’ The Boomer admitted.

  Nobody can look quite so eloquently bored as a Negro. The eyes are almost closed, showing a lower rim of white, the mouth droops, the head tilts. The whole man suddenly seems to wilt. The Boomer now exhibited all these signals of ennui and Alleyn, remembering them of old, said: ‘Never mind. I mustn’t keep you any longer. Could we, do you think, just settle these two points: First, will you receive the Deputy Commissioner when he comes?’

  ‘Of course,’ drawled The Boomer without opening his eyes.

  ‘Second. Do you now wish the CID to carry on inside the Embassy or would you prefer us to clear out? The decision is your Excellency’s, of course, but we would be grateful for a definite ruling.’

  The Boomer opened his slightly bloodshot eyes. He looked full at Alleyn. ‘Stay,’ he said.

  There was a tap at the door and Gibson, large, pale and apologetic, came in.

  ‘I’m sure I beg your pardon, sir,’ he said to the President. ‘Colonel Sinclaire, the Deputy Commissioner, has arrived and hopes to see you.’

  The Boomer, without looking at Gibson, said: ‘Ask my equerry to bring him in.’

  Alleyn walked to the door. He had caught a signal of urgency from his colleague.

  ‘Don’t you go, Rory,’ said The Boomer.

  ‘I’m afraid I must,’ said Alleyn.

  Outside, in the passage, he found Mr Whipplestone fingering his tie and looking deeply perturbed. Alleyn said: ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It may not be anything,’ Gibson answered, ‘It’s just that we’ve been talking to the Costard man who was detailed to serve in the tent.’

  ‘Stocky, well-set up, fair-haired?’

  ‘That’s him. Name of Chubb,’ said Gibson.

  ‘Alas,’ said Mr Whipplestone.

  CHAPTER 5

  Small Hours

  Chubb stood more-or-less to attention, looking straight before him with his arms to his sides. He cut quite a pleasing figure in Costard et Cie’s discreet livery: midnight blue shell-jacket and trousers with gold endorsements. His faded blond hair was short and well-brushed, his fresh West Country complexion and blue eyes deceptively gave him the air of an outdoor man. He still wore his white gloves.

  Alleyn had agreed with Mr Whipplestone that it would be best if the latter were not present at the interview. ‘Though,’ Alleyn said, ‘there’s no reason at all to suppose that Chubb, any more than my silly old brother George, had anything to do with the event.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ Mr Whipplestone had returned. ‘Of course. It’s just that, however illogically and stupidly, I would prefer Chubb not to have been on duty in that wretched pavilion. Just as I would prefer him not to have odd-time jobs with Sheridan and those beastly Montforts. And it would be rather odd for me to be there, wouldn’t it? Very foolish of me no doubt. Let it go at that.’

  So Alleyn and an anonymous sergeant had Chubb to themselves in the Controller’s office.

  Alleyn said: ‘I want to be quite sure I’ve got this right. You were in and out of the pavilion with champagne which you fetched from an ice box that had been set up outside the pavilion. You did this in conjunction with one of the Embassy servants. He waited on the President and the people immediately surrounding him, didn’t he? I remember that he came to my wife and me soon after we had settled there.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Chubb.

  ‘And you looked after the rest of the party.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Yes. Well now, Chubb, we’ve kept you hanging about all this time in the hope that you can give us some help about what happened in the pavilion.’

  ‘Not much chance of that, sir. I never noticed anything, sir.’

  ‘That makes two of us, I’m afraid,’ Alleyn said, ‘It happened like a bolt from the blue, didn’t it? Were you actually in the pavilion? When the lights went out?’

  Yes, it appeared. At the back. He had put his tray down on a trestle table, in preparation for the near blackout about which the servants had all been warned. He had remained there through the first item.

  ‘And were you still there when the singer, Karbo, appeared?’ Yes, he said. Still there. He had had an uninterrupted view of Karbo, standing in his spotlight with his shadow thrown up behind him on the white screen.

  ‘Did you notice where the guard with the spear was standing?’ Yes. At the rear. Behind the President’s chair.

  ‘On your left, would that be?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And your fellow-waiter?’

  ‘The nigger?’ said Chubb, and after a glance at Alleyn, ‘Beg pardon, sir. The native.’

  ‘The African, yes.’

  ‘He was somewhere there. At the rear, I never took no notice,’ said Chubb stonily.

  ‘You didn’t speak to either of them, at all?’

  ‘No, thanks. I wouldn’t think they knew how.’

  ‘You don’t like black people?’ Alleyn said lightly.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Well. To come to the moment when the shot was fired. I’m getting as many accounts as possible from the people who were in the pavilion and I’d like yours too, if you will. You remember that the performer had given out one note, if that’s the way to
put it. A long-drawn-out sound. And then – as you recall it – what?’

  ‘The shot, sir.’

  ‘Did you get an impression about where the sound came from?’

  ‘The house, sir.’

  ‘Yes. Well, now, Chubb. Could you just, as best as you are able, tell me your own impression of what followed the shot. In the pavilion, I mean.’

  Nothing clear-cut emerged. People had stood up. A lady had screamed. A gentleman had shouted out not to panic. (George, Alleyn thought.)

  ‘Yes. But as to what you actually saw from where you were, at the back of the pavilion?’

  Hard to say, exactly Chubb said in his wooden voice. People moving about a bit but not much. Alleyn said that they had appeared, hadn’t they? ‘Like black silhouettes against the spotlight screen.’ Chubb agreed.

  ‘The guard – the man with the spear? He was on your left. Quite close to you. Wasn’t he?’

  ‘At the start, sir, he was. Before the pavilion lights went out.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  There was a considerable pause: ‘I couldn’t say, exactly, sir. Not straightaway, like.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  Chubb suddenly erupted, ‘I was grabbed,’ he said. ‘He sprung on me. Me! From behind. Me!’

  ‘Grabbed? Do you mean by the spearsman?’

  ‘Not him. The other black bastard.’

  ‘The waiter?’

  ‘Yes. Sprung it on me. From behind. Me!’

  ‘What did he spring on you? A half-Nelson?’

  ‘Head-lock! I couldn’t speak. And he put in the knee.’

  ‘How did you know it was the waiter?’

  ‘I knew all right. I knew and no error.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Bare arm for one thing. And the smell: like salad oil or something. I knew.’

  ‘How long did this last?’

  ‘Long enough,’ said Chubb, fingering his neck. ‘Long enough for his mate to put in the spear, I reckon.’

  ‘Did he hold you until the lights went up?’

  ‘No, sir. Only while it was being done. So I couldn’t see it. The stabbing. I was doubled up. Me!’ Chubb reiterated with, if possible, an access of venom. ‘But I heard. The sound. You can’t miss it. And the fall.’

  The sergeant cleared his throat.

  Alleyn said: ‘This is enormously important, Chubb. I’m sure you realize that, don’t you? You’re saying that the Ng’ombwanan waiter attacked and restrained you while the guard speared the Ambassador.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘All right. Why, do you suppose? I mean, why you, in particular?’

  ‘I was nearest, sir, wasn’t I? I might of got in the way or done something quick, mightn’t I?’

  ‘Was the small, hard chair overturned during this attack?’

  ‘It might of been,’ Chubb said after a pause.

  ‘How old are you, Chubb?’

  ‘Me, sir? Fifty-two, sir.’

  ‘What did you do in World War II?’

  ‘Commando, sir.’

  ‘Ah!’ Alleyn said, quietly, ‘I see.’

  ‘They wouldn’t of sprung it across me in those days, sir.’

  ‘I’m sure they wouldn’t. One more thing. After the shot and before you were attacked and doubled up, you saw the Ambassador, did you, on his feet? Silhouetted against the screen?’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Did you recognize him?’

  Chubb was silent.

  ‘Well – did you?’

  ‘I – can’t say I did. Not exactly.’

  ‘How do you mean – not exactly?’

  ‘It all happened so quick, didn’t it? I – I reckon I thought he was the other one. The President.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well. Because. Well, because, you know, he was near where the President sat, like. He must of moved away from his own chair, sir, mustn’t he? And standing up like he was in command, as you might say. And the President had roared out something in their lingo, hadn’t he?’

  ‘So, you’d say, would you, Chubb, that the Ambassador was killed in mistake for the President?’

  ‘I couldn’t say that, sir, could I? Not for certain. But I’d say he might of been. He might easy of been.’

  ‘You didn’t see anybody attack the spearsman?’

  ‘Him! He couldn’t of been attacked, could he? I was the one that got clobbered, sir, wasn’t I? Not him: he did the big job, didn’t he?’

  ‘He maintains that he was given a chop and his spear was snatched out of his grasp by the man who attacked him. He says that he didn’t see who this man was. You may remember that when the lights came up and the Ambassador’s body was seen, the spearsman was crouched on the ground up near the back of the pavilion.’

  Through this speech of Alleyn’s such animation as Chubb had displayed, deserted him. He reverted to his former manner, staring straight in front of him with such a wooden air that the ebb of colour from his face and its dark, uneven return, seemed to bear no relation to any emotional experience.

  When he spoke it was to revert to his favourite observation.

  ‘I wouldn’t know about any of that,’ he said, ‘I never took any notice of that.’

  ‘Didn’t you? But you were quite close to the spearsman. You were standing by him. I happen to remember seeing you there.’

  ‘I was a bit shook up. After what the other one done to me.’

  ‘So it would seem. When the lights came on, was the waiter who attacked you, as you maintain, still there?’

  ‘Him? He’d scarpered.’

  ‘Have you seen him since then?’

  Chubb said he hadn’t but added that he couldn’t tell one of the black bastards from another. The conventional mannerisms of the servant together with his careful grammar had almost disappeared. He sounded venomous. Alleyn then asked him why he hadn’t reported the attack on himself immediately to the police and Chubb became injured and exasperated. What chance had there been for that, he complained, with them all being shoved about into queues and drafted into groups and told to behave quiet and act cooperative and stay put and questions and statements would come later.

  He began to sweat and put his hands behind his back. He said he didn’t feel too good. Alleyn told him that the sergeant would make a typescript of his statement and he would be asked to read and sign it if he found it correct.

  ‘In the meantime,’ he said, ‘we’ll let you go home to Mr Whipplestone.’

  Chubb reverting to his earlier style said anxiously: ‘Beg pardon, sir, but I didn’t know you knew –’

  ‘I know Mr Whipplestone very well. He told me about you.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Will that be all, then, sir?’

  ‘I think so, for the present. Good night to you, Chubb.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Good night, sir.’

  He left the room with his hands clenched.

  ‘Commando, eh?’ said the sergeant to his notes.

  II

  Mr Fox was doing his competent best with the group of five persons who sat wearily about the apartment that had been used as a sort of bar-cum-smoking-room for male guests at the party. It smelt of stale smoke, the dregs of alcohol, heavy upholstery and, persistently, of the all-pervading sandarac. It wore an air of exhausted raffishness.

  The party of five being interviewed by Mr Fox and noted down by a sergeant consisted of a black plenipotentiary and his wife, the last of the governors of British Ng’ombwana and his wife, and Sir George Alleyn, Bart. They were the only members of the original party of twelve guests who had remembered anything that might conceivably have a bearing upon events in the pavilion and they remained after a painstaking winnowing had disposed of their companions.

  The ex-governor, who was called Sir John Smythe, remembered that immediately after the shot was fired, everybody moved to the front of the pavilion. He was contradicted by Lady Smythe who said that for her part she had remained riveted in her chair. The plenipotentiary’s wife, whose understanding of
English appeared to be rudimentary, conveyed through her husband that she, also, had remained seated. Mr Fox reminded himself that Mrs Alleyn, instructed by her husband, had not risen. The plenipotentiary recalled that the chairs had been set out in an inverted V shape with the President and his Ambassador at the apex and the guests forming the two wide-angled wings.

  ‘Is that the case, sir?’ said Fox comfortably, ‘I see. So that when you gentlemen stood up you’d all automatically be forward of the President? Nearer to the opening of the pavilion than he was? Would that be correct?’

  ‘Quite right, Mr Fox. Quite right,’ said Sir George, who had adopted a sort of uneasy reciprocal attitude towards Fox and had, at the outset, assured him jovially that he’d heard a great deal about him to which Fox replied: ‘Is that the case, sir? If I might just have your name?’

  It was Sir George who remembered the actual order in which the guests had sat and although Fox had already obtained this information from Alleyn, he gravely noted it down. On the President’s left had been the Ambassador, Sir John and Lady Smythe, the plenipotentiary’s wife, the plenipotentiary, a guest who had now gone home and Sir George himself, ‘In starvation corner, what?’ said Sir George lightly to the Smythes, who made little deprecatory noises.

  ‘Yes, I see, thank you, sir,’ said Fox. ‘And on the President’s right hand, sir?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Sir George waving his hand. ‘My brother. My brother and his wife. Yes. ’Strordinary coincidence.’ Apparently feeling the need for some sort of endorsement he turned to his fellow guests. ‘My brother, the bobby,’ he explained. ‘Ridiculous, what?’

  ‘A very distinguished bobby,’ Sir John Smythe murmured, to which Sir George returned: ‘Oh, quite! Quite! Not for me to say but – he’ll do.’ He laughed and made a jovial little grimace.

  ‘Yes,’ said Fox to his notes. ‘And four other guests who have now left. Thank you, sir.’ He looked over the top of his spectacles at his hearers. ‘We come to the incident itself. There’s this report: pistol shot or whatever it was. The lights in the pavilion are out. Everybody except the ladies and the President gets to his feet. Doing what?’

  ‘How d’you mean, doing what?’ Sir John Smythe asked.

  ‘Well, sir, did everybody face out into the garden, trying to see what was going on – apart from the concert item which, I understand, stopped short when the report was heard.’