Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

Alleyn was beside it. He lifted the receiver and heard someone dialling. The ringing sound set in. After a longish pause a muffled voice said, “Yes?”

“That you, Xenoclea?” the Colonel said. “Chrissy rang you a moment ago, didn’t she? All right. He’s here .”

“Be careful.” (The Sanskrit, sure enough.)

“Of course. This is only to warn you.”

“Have you been drinking?’

“My dear Xenny! Look! He may call on you.”

“Why?”

“God knows. I’ll come round later. Or ring. ’Bye.”

A click and then the dialling tone.

Alleyn hung up and walked over to the window.

He was gazing at the distant prospect of the Basilica when the Colonel re-entered the room. Alleyn saw at once that he had decided on a change of manner. He came in jauntily.

“Ah!” he said. “There we are! Chrissy’s insisting on making herself presentable. She’ll be down in a moment. Says she feels quite equal to it. Come and take a pew. I think a drink while we wait is indicated, don’t you? What shall it be?”

“Very civil of you,” Alleyn said, speaking the language, “but it’s not on for me, I’m afraid. Please don’t let me stop you, though.”

“Not when you’re on guard duty, what? Bad luck! Well, just to show there’s no ill-feeling,” said the Colonel, “I think I will.”

He opened a door at the far end of the room and went into what evidently was his study. Alleyn saw a martial collection of sword, service automatic and a massive hunting rifle hung on the wall. The Colonel returned with a bottle in one hand and a very large gin in the other.

“Your very good health,” he said, and drank half of it. Fortified and refreshed, it seemed, he talked away easily about the assassination. He took it for granted, or appeared to do so, that the spearman had killed the Ambassador in mistake for the President. He said that you never could tell with blacks, that he knew them, that he’d had more experience of them, he ventured to claim, than most. “Bloody good fighting men, mind you, but you can’t trust them beyond a certain point.” He thought you could depend upon it that when the President and his entourage had got back to Ng’ombwana the whole thing would be dealt with in their way and very little would be heard of it. “There’ll be a new mlinzi on duty and no questions asked, I wouldn’t wonder. On the other hand, he may decide to make a public example.”

“By that do you mean a public execution?”

“Don’t take me up on that, old man,” said the Colonel, who was helping himself to another double gin. “He hasn’t gone in for that particular exercise, so far. Not like the late lamented, f instance.”

“The Ambassador?”

“That’s right. He had a pretty lurid past in that respect. Between you and me and the gatepost.”

“Really?”

“As a young man. Ran a sort of guerilla group. When we were still there. Never brought to book but it’s common knowledge. He’s turned respectable of late years.”

His wife made her entrance: fully clothed, coiffured and regrettably made up.

“Time for dinkies?” she asked. “Super! Give me one, darling: kick-sticks.”

Alleyn thought: “She’s already given herself one or more. This is excessively distasteful.”

“In a minute,” said her husband. “Sit down, Chris.”

She did, with an insecure suggestion of gaiety. “What have you two been gossiping about?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” Alleyn said, “to bother you at an inopportune time and when you’re not feeling well, but there is one question I’d like to ask you, Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort.”

“Me? Is there? What?”

“Why did you fire off that Luger and then throw it in the pond?”

She gaped at him, emitted a strange whining sound that, incongruously enough, reminded him of Mrs. Chubb. Before she could speak her husband said: “Shut up, Chris. I’ll handle it. I mean that. Shut up.”

He turned on Alleyn. The glass in his hand was unsteady, but Alleyn thought he was in pretty good command of himself: one of those heavy drinkers who are seldom really drunk. He’d had a shock but he was equal to it.

He said: “My wife will not answer any questions until we have consulted our solicitor. What you suggest is obviously unwarranted and quite ridiculous. And ’stremely ’fensive. You haven’t heard the last of this, whatever-your-rank-is Alleyn.”

“I’m afraid you’re right, there,” Alleyn said. “And nor have you, perhaps. Good evening to you. I’ll show myself out.”

“And the odd thing about that little episode, Br’er Fox, is this: my bit of personal bugging on the Cockburn-Montfort telephone exchange copped Miss Xenoclea Sanskrit — Xenny for short — in an apparently motiveless lie. The gallant Colonel said, ‘He—’ meaning me—‘may call on you,’ and instead of saying, ‘He has called on me,’ she merely growled, ‘Why?’ Uncandid behaviour from a comrade, don’t you think?”

“If,” said Fox carefully, “this little lot, meaning the Colonel and his lady, the Sanskrit combination, the Sheridan gentleman and his chap Chubb, are all tied up in some hate-the-blacks club, and if , as seems possible, seeing most of them were at the party, and seeing the way the lady carried on, they’re mixed up in the fatality—” He drew breath.

“I can’t wait,” Alleyn said.

“I was only going to say it wouldn’t, given all these circumstances, be anything out of the way if they got round to looking sideways at each other.” He sighed heavily. “On the other hand,” he said, “and I must say on the face of it this is the view I’m inclined to favour, we may have a perfectly straightforward job. The man with the spear used the spear and what else took place round about in the dark has little or no bearing on the matter.”

“How about Mrs. C.-M. and her Luger in the ladies’ loo?”

“Blast!” said Fox.

“The whole thing’s so bloody untidy,” Alleyn grumbled.

“I wouldn’t mind going over the headings,” Fox confessed.

“Plough ahead and much good may it do you.”

“ A ,” said Fox, massively checking it off with finger and thumb. “ A . The occurrence. Ambassador killed by spear. Spearman stationed at rear in handy position. Says he was clobbered and his spear taken off him. Savs he’s innocent. B . Chubb. Ex-commando. Also at rear. Member of this secret society or whatever it is. Suggestion that he’s a black-hater. Says he was clobbered by black waiter. C . Mrs. C-M. Fires shot, probably blank, from ladies’ conveniences. Why? To draw attention? To get the President on his feet so’s he could be speared? By whom? This is the nitty-gritty one,” said Fox. “If the club’s an anti-black show would they collaborate with the spearman or the waiter? The answer is: unlikely. Very unlikely. Where does this take us?”

“Hold on to your hats, boys.”

“To Chubb,” said Fox. “It takes us to Chubb. Well, doesn’t it? Chubb, set up by the club, clobbers the spearman and does the job on the Ambassador, and afterwards says the waiter clobbered him and held him down.”

“But the waiter maintains that he stumbled in the dark and accidentally grabbed Chubb. If Chubb was the spearman what are we to make of this?”

“Mightn’t it be the case, though? Mightn’t he have stumbled and momentarily clung to Chubb?”

“Before or after Chubb clobbered the spearman and grabbed the spear?”

Fox began to look disconcerted. “I don’t like it much,” he confessed. “Still, after a fashion it fits. After a fashion it does.”

“It’s a brave show, Br’er Fox, and does you credit. Carry on.”