by Ngaio Marsh
‘That’s almost exactly how the President translated him to me.’
‘Yes. And I think it is a true statement. But – well, my dear Alleyn, I hope you won’t think I’ve got an awful cheek if I suggest to you that the President is on the whole a naïve person and that he is not going to heed, not even perhaps notice, any vague ambiguities that might cast doubt upon his men. But of course you know him very well and I don’t.’
‘Do I?’ said Alleyn. ‘Perhaps. There are times when I wonder. It’s not a simple story: I can assure you of that.’
‘There’s something very likeable about him. You were quite close friends, I think you said, at school.’
‘He’s always roaring out that I was his best friend. He was certainly one of mine. He’s got a very good brain, you know. He sailed through his law like nobody’s business. But you’re right,’ Alleyn said thoughtfully, ‘he cuts dead anything he doesn’t want to believe.’
‘And of course he doesn’t want to believe that one of his own people committed a crime?’ Mr Whipplestone urged. Fox made a noise of agreement.
Alleyn said: ‘No. Perhaps he doesn’t – want to,’ and vexedly rubbed his nose. ‘All the same,’ he said, ‘I think we may be fishing in the wrong pond. In very muddy waters, at all events.’
‘Do you mind,’ Mr Whipplestone asked, ‘if I put a very direct question to you?’
‘How can I tell, till I hear it?’
‘Quite. Here goes then. Do you think an attempt was made upon the President?’
‘Yes.’
‘And do you think it will be repeated?’
‘I think it’s only too likely that something else may be tried. Only too likely,’ said Alleyn.
There was a long silence.
‘What happens now, Mr Alleyn?’ asked Fox at last.
‘I’m damned if I know. Call it a night, I suppose. We’ve been given our marching orders and no mistake. Come on. We’d better tell Fred Gibson, hadn’t we?’
Mr Gibson was not sorry to get the sack from the Embassy. It relieved him of an untenable and undefinable task and left him free to supervise the orthodox business of mounting security measures outside the premises and wherever the President might take it into his head to go during the remainder of his visit. He expressed muffled but profound satisfaction when Alleyn pointed out that the public appearances would probably be curtailed when not cancelled.
‘You could say,’ he mumbled presently, ‘that after a fashion we’ve picked up a bit of joy in this show.’ And he divulged that they had found the shell of the shot fired from the Luger. It was on the ground outside the lavatory window. They’d had no luck with a bullet.
‘But,’ said Gibson with a kind of huffy satisfaction, ‘I don’t reckon we need to shed tears over that one. Take a look at this.’
He opened his large pale hand. Alleyn and Fox bent over it.
‘Wad?’ Fox said. ‘Here! Wait a sec. I wonder now.’
‘Yes,’ Alleyn said, ‘Fred. I wonder if you’ve drawn a blank.’ They left the Embassy.
Troy was awake when Alleyn got home. She called out to him to save him the trouble of trying not to disturb her. When he came in she was sitting up in bed with her arms round her knees.
‘Not a nice party, after all,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry, my darling.’
‘Have you –?’
‘No. Troy. I had to let you go off without a word. I couldn’t look after you. Were you very much shocked?’
‘I didn’t really see. Well – yes – I did see but in a funny sort of way it didn’t look – real. And it was only for a flash – not more than a second or two. In a way, I didn’t believe it.’
‘Good.’
‘Everybody sort of milling round.’
‘That’s right.’
‘And you got us all out of the way so very expeditiously.’
‘Did I?’
‘Yes. But –’ she bit her lip and said very quickly – ‘it was the spear, wasn’t it? He was speared?’
He nodded and put her irregular dark locks of hair out of her eyes.
‘Then,’ Troy said, ‘haven’t you arrested that superb-looking being?’
‘The Boomer says the superb-looking being didn’t do it. And anyway we haven’t the authority inside the Embassy. It’s a rum go and no mistake. Do you want to hear?’
‘Not now. You’d better get some sleep.’
‘Same to you. I shall have a bath. Good morning, my love. Oh – I forgot. I have a present for you from The Boomer!’
‘For me? What can you mean?’
‘He wants you to paint him. His suggestion, not mine.’
Troy was immovable for several seconds. She then gave Alleyn a quick exultant look and suddenly burrowed into her pillow.
He stared down at her and reflected on things one was supposed to remember about the artistic temperament. He touched her hair and went off to his bath with the dawn light paling the window.
CHAPTER 6
Afternoon in the Capricorns
When, in response to a telephone call taken by Troy, Alleyn called on the following afternoon at No. 1, Capricorn Walk, he was received on the front steps by Lucy Lockett, the cat.
She sat, with a proprietory air on the top step and had a good look at him.
‘I know who you are,’ said Alleyn. ‘Good afternoon, my dear.’ He extended his forefinger. Lucy rose, stretched elaborately, yawned and advanced her whiskers to within an inch of the fingertip. Mr Whipplestone looked out of his open bow window.
‘There you are,’ he said. ‘I won’t be a second.’
Lucy sprang adroitly from the steps to the window-sill and thence into the bosom of her master, who presently opened the front door, still carrying her.
‘Come in, do, do,’ he said. ‘We’ve been expecting you.’
‘What a nice house you’ve got.’
‘Do you think so? I must say I like it.’
‘You hadn’t far to walk last night – or this morning.’
‘No. Do you know, Alleyn, when I was coming home at whatever eldritch hour, I caught myself wondering – well, almost wondering – if the whole affair could have been some sort of hallucination. Rather like that dodging-about-in-time nonsense they do in science fiction plays: as if it had happened off the normal temporal plane. The whole thing – so very – ah – off beat. Wasn’t it?’
‘Was and is,’ Alleyn agreed.
He found Mr Whipplestone himself rather off-beat as he sat primly on his desk chair in his perfectly tailored suit, with his Trumper-style hair-cut, his discreet necktie, his elegant cuff-links, his eyeglass and, pounding away at his impeccable waistcoat, his little black cat.
‘About Chubb,’ he said anxiously, ‘I’m awfully bothered about Chubb. You see, I don’t know – and he hasn’t said anything – and I must say Mrs Chubb looks too ghastly for words.’
‘He hasn’t told you the black waiter attacked him?’
‘He hasn’t told me anything. I felt it was not advisable for me to make any approach.’
‘What’s your opinion of Chubb? What sort of impression have you formed, by and large, since the Chubbs have been looking after you?’
Mr Whipplestone had some difficulty in expressing himself but it emerged that from his point of view the Chubbs were as near perfection as made no difference. In fact, Mr Whipplestone said wistfully, one had thought they no longer existed except perhaps in the employment of millionaires.
‘I’ve sometime wondered if they were too good to be true. Ominous foreboding!’ he said.
‘Didn’t you say Chubb seemed to have taken a scunner on blacks.’
‘Well, yes. I rather fancied so. It was when I looked over this house. We were in the room upstairs and – Oh, Lord, it was the poor old boy himself – the Ambassador – walked down the street. The Chubbs were near the window and saw him. It was nothing, really. They stared. My dear Alleyn, you won’t take from this any grotesque suggestion that Chubb – well, no, of course you won�
��t.’
‘I only thought a prejudice of that sort might colour any statement he offered. He certainly made no bones about his dislike when we talked to him.’
‘Not surprising when you tell me one of them had half-strangled him!’
‘He told me that.’
‘Don’t you believe him?’
‘I don’t know,’ Alleyn said with an odd twist in his voice. ‘Perhaps. But with misgivings.’
‘Surely,’ Mr Whipplestone said, ‘it can be a very straight-forward affair, after all. For whatever motive, the Ng’ombwanan guard and the waiter conspire to murder either the Ambassador or the President. At the crucial moment, the servant finds Chubb in the way and doubles him up, leaving the guard free to commit the crime. The guard kills the Ambassador. To the President he confesses himself to be what my poor Chubb calls clobbered.’
‘Yes,’ Alleyn said. ‘As neat as a new pin – almost.’
‘So you see – you see!’ cried Mr Whipplestone, stroking the cat.
‘And the pistol shot?’
‘Part of the conspiracy – I don’t know – yes. That awful lady says it was a black person, doesn’t she? Well, then!’
‘Whoever it was probably fired a blank.’
‘Indeed? There you are, then. A diversion. A red-herring calculated to attract the attention of all of you away from the pavilion and to bring the President to his feet.’
‘As I said,’ Alleyn conceded. ‘New pins aren’t in it.’
‘Then – why –?’
‘My dear man, I don’t know. I promise you, I don’t know. It’s by the pricking of my thumbs or some other intimation not admissible in the police manuals. It just all seems to me to be a bit too much of a good thing. Like those fish in aspic that ocean-going cruisers display in the tropics and never serve.’
‘Oh, come!’
‘Still, there are more tenable queries to be raised. Item. Mrs C-M’s black thug with a stocking over his head. Seen dimly against the loo window, unseen during the assault in the dressing-room. Rushed out of the “Ladies” into the entrance hall – there’s no other exit – where there were four of Gibson’s men, one of them hard by the door. They all had torches. None of them got any impression of anybody emerging precipitately into the hall. Incidentally there was another SB man near the master-switch in the rear passage, who killed the blackout about ten seconds after he heard the pistol shot. In those ten seconds the murder was done.’
‘Well?’
‘Well, our girl-friend has it that after the shot her assailant, having chucked her out of the loo, emerged still in the blackout, kicked her about a bit and then bolted, leaving her prone and still in the dark. And then, she says, the loo-ladies, including our blushing sergeant, emerged and fell about all over her. Still in the dark. The loo-ladies, on the other hand, maintain they erupted into the anteroom immediately after the shot.’
‘They were confused, no doubt.’
‘The sergeant wasn’t.’
‘Drat!’ said Mr Whipplestone. ‘What’s all this got to do with my wretched Chubb?’
‘I’ve not the remotest idea. But it tempts me to suspect that when it comes to equivocation your black candidates have nothing on Mrs Cockburn-Montfort.’
Mr Whipplestone thought this over. Lucy tapped his chin with her paw and then fell asleep.
‘Do I take it,’ he asked at last, ‘that you think Mrs C-M lied extensively about the black man with the stocking over his head?’
‘I think she invented him.’
‘Then who the devil fired the shot?’
‘Oh,’ Alleyn said. ‘No difficulty with that one, I fancy. She did.’
II
Mr Whipplestone was much taken aback by this pronouncement. He gave himself time to digest its implications. He detached his cat and placed her on the floor where, with an affronted and ostentatious air, she set about cleaning herself. He brushed his waistcoat, crossed his legs, joined his finger-tips and finally said: ‘How very intriguing.’ After a further pause he asked Alleyn if he had any more specific material to support his startling view of Mrs Cockburn-Montfort’s activities.
Not specific, perhaps, Alleyn conceded. But he pointed out that a black male person planning to fire the pistol, whether or not it was loaded with a blank, would have been much better advised to do so from the men’s lavatory, where his presence would not be noticed, than from the women’s where it extravagantly would. In the men’s he would be taken for an attendant if he was in livery and for a guest if he was not.
‘Really,’ Alleyn said, ‘it would be the height of dottiness for him to muscle-in to the female offices where he might – as indeed according to Mrs C-M he did – disturb a lady already in situ.’
‘True,’ said Mr Whipplestone moodily. ‘True. True. True.’
‘Moreover,’ Alleyn continued, ‘the sergeant, who, however naughty her lapse, displayed a certain expertise in the sequel, is persuaded that no rumpus, beyond the shot and subsequent screams of Mrs C-M, disturbed the seclusion of those premises.’
‘I see.’
‘As for the weapon, an examination of the barrel, made by an expert this morning, confirms that the solitary round was probably a blank. There are no finger-prints. This is negative evidence except that the sergeant, supported by the two orthodox attendants, says that Mrs C-M was wearing shoulder length gloves. The normal practice under these circumstances is for such gloves to be peeled off the hand from the wrist. The glove is then tucked back into the arm-piece which remains undisturbed. But the lady was fully gloved and buttoned and according to her own account certainly had no chance to effect this readjustment. She would hardly sit on the floor putting on gloves and yelling pen and ink.’
‘All very plausible,’ said Mr Whipplestone. Alleyn thought that he was hurriedly re-arranging his thoughts to accommodate this new development.
‘I fancy,’ Alleyn said, ‘it’s better than that. I can’t for the life of me think of any other explanation that will accommodate all the discrepancies in the lady’s tarra-diddle. And what’s more she was taking dirty great sniffs at her own smelling-salts to make herself cry. At any rate I’m going to call upon her.’
‘When!’ quite shouted Mr Whipplestone.
‘When I leave you. Why? What’s up?’
‘Nothing.’ he said in a hurry, ‘nothing really. Except that you’ll probably be admitted by Chubb.’
‘By Chubb!’
‘He, ah, he “does for” the Cockburn-Montforts on Friday afternoons. There’s nothing in that, you know, Alleyn. The Chubbs have one or two, as it were, casual jobs about the neighbourhood. They baby-sit every other Sunday at No. 17 for instance. It’s an arrangement.’
‘And Mrs Chubb obliges your tenant in the basement, doesn’t she?’
‘An hour, every other day. She will give us tea, by the way.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘Any second now. I asked for it very early, hoping you would join me. Mrs Alleyn said something about you not having had time for luncheon.’
‘How very kind, I shall enjoy it.’
Lucy, after some preparatory clawing at the foot of the door, succeeded in opening it widely enough to make an exit which she effected with her tail up and an ambiguous remark.
‘Sometimes,’ said Mr Whipplestone, ‘I’ve felt almost inclined to pump the Chubbs.’
‘About Sheridan and the Cockburn-Montforts?’
‘Discreetly. Yes. But of course, one doesn’t do that sort of thing. Or,’ Mr Whipplestone said with a self-deprecatory lift of his hand, ‘I don’t.’
‘No,’ Alleyn said, ‘I don’t suppose you do. Do you mind, though, if I have a word with Mrs Chubb?’
‘Here? Now?’ he said, evidently dismayed by the suggestion.
‘Well – later if you’d rather.’
‘She’s awfully upset. About Chubb being man-handled by that black waiter and interviewed afterwards.’
‘I’ll try not to add to her woes. It really is just routine, Sam as far as I know.’
‘Well, I do hope it doesn’t turn out to be – anything else. Sh!’
He held up his finger. From somewhere outside the room came a series of intermittent bumps or taps. They grew louder.
Alleyn went to the door into the hall, left ajar by Lucy Lockett, and looked out.
To see Lucy herself backing down the stairs crab-wise and dragging some small object by a chain. It bumped from step to wooden step. When she arrived at the bottom she contrived with some difficulty to take the object up in her mouth. Giving out distorted mews she passed Alleyn, reentered the drawing-room and dropped her trophy at Mr Whipplestone’s feet.
‘Oh no, oh no!’ he cried out. ‘Not again. For pity’s sake, not again!’
But it was, in fact, a white pottery fish.
While he still gazed at it with the liveliest dismay a clink of china sounded in the passage. With extraordinary swiftness Alleyn scooped up the fish and dropped it in his pocket.
‘Not a word,’ he said.
Mrs Chubb came in with a tea-tray.
Alleyn gave her good afternoon and brought forward a small table to Mr Whipplestone’s chair, ‘Is this the right drill?’ he asked and she thanked him nervously and set down her tray. When she had left and he had heard her go upstairs he said: ‘It’s not Sheridan’s fish. She brought it from above.’
Mr Whipplestone’s jaw dropped. He stared at Alleyn as if he had never seen him before. ‘Show me,’ he said at last.
Alleyn produced the object and dangled it by its chain in front of Mr Whipplestone who said: ‘Yes. It is. I’ve remembered.’
‘What have you remembered?’
‘I think I told you. The first time she stole it. Or rather one like it. From down below. I had the curious feeling I’d seen it before. And then again, that evening when I returned it to Sheridan. Round that ghastly fellow Sanskrit’s fat neck. The same feeling. Now I’ve remembered: it was on the day I inspected the premises. The fish was in the Chubbs’ room upstairs. Hanging from a photograph of a girl with black ribbon attached to the frame. Rather morbid. And this,’ said Mr Whipplestone, ramming home his point, ‘is it.’ He actually covered his face with his hands. ‘And that,’ he said, ‘is very uncomfortable news.’