Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

Troy, still absently, said, “All right,” and then suddenly aware: “Are you talking about bombs ?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Good Lord!”

“It’s not a silly notion, you know. Well, is it?”

“It’s a jolly boring one, though.”

“Promise.”

“All right,” Troy said, and squeezed out a dollop of cadmium red on her palette. She put down her drink and took up a brush.

Alleyn wondered how the hell one kept one’s priorities straight. He watched her nervous, paint-stained hand poise the brush and then use it with the authority of a fiddler. “What she’s up to,” he thought, “and what I am supposed to be up to are a stellar-journey apart and yet ours, miraculously, is a happy marriage. Why?”

Troy turned round and looked at him. “I was listening,” she said, “I do promise.”

“Well — thank you, my love,” he said.

That evening, at about the same time the Boomer dined royally at Buckingham Palace, Alleyn, with Fox in attendance, set out to keep observation upon Mr. Sheridan in his basement flat at No. 1, Capricorn Walk. They drove there in a “nondescript” equipped with a multi-channel radio set. Alleyn remembered that there had been some tatk of Mr. Whipplestone dining with his sister who had come up to London for the night, so there was no question of attracting his attention.

They had been advised by a pandaon Unit Beat that the occupant of the basement flat was at home, but his window curtains must be very heavy because they completely excluded the light. Alleyn and Fox approached from Capricorn Square and parked in the shadow of the plane trees. The evening was sultry and overcast and the precincts were lapped in their customary quietude. From the Sun in Splendour, farther back in the Square, came the sound of voices, not very loud.

“Hold on a bit. I’m in two minds about this one, Fox,” Alleyn said. “It’s a question of whether the coterie as a whole is concerned in last night’s abortive attempt if that’s what it was, or whether Mrs. C.-M. and the Colonel acted quite independently under their own alcoholic steam. Which seems unlikely. If it was a concerted affair they may very well have called a meeting to review the situation. Quite possibly to cook up another attempt.”

“Or to fall out among themselves,” said Fox.

“Indeed. Or to fall out.”

“Suppose, for instance,” Fox said in his plain way, “Chubb did the job, thinking it was the President: they won’t be best pleased with him . And you tell me he seems to be nervous.”

“Very nervous.”

“What’s in your mind, then? For now?”

“I thought we might lurk here for a bit to see if Mr. Sheridan has any callers or if, alternatively, he himself steps out to take the air.”

“Do you know what he looks like?”

“Sam Whipplestone says he’s dark, bald, middle height, well-dressed, and speaks with a lisp. I’ve never seen him to my knowledge.” A pause. “He’s peeping,” said Alleyn.

A vertical sliver of light had appeared in the basement windows of No. la. After a second or two it was shut off.

“I wouldn’t have thought,” Fox said, “they’d fancy those premises for a meeting. Under the circs. With Mr. Whipplestone living up above and all.”

“Nor would I.”

Fox grunted comfortably and settled down in his seat. Several cars passed down Capricorn Walk towards Baronsgate, the last being a taxi which stopped at No. 1. A further half-dozen cars followed by a delivery van passed between the watchers and the taxi and were held up, presumably by a block in Baronsgate itself. It was one of those sudden and rare incursions of traffic into the quiet of the Capricorns at night. When it had cleared a figure was revealed coming through the gate at the top of the basement steps at No. 1: a man in a dark suit and scarf wearing a “City” hat. He set off down the Walk in the direction of Baronsgate. Alleyn waited for a little and then drove forward. He turned the corner, passed No. 1, and parked three houses further along.

“He’s going into the Mews,” he said. And sure enough, Mr. Sheridan crossed the street, turned right, and disappeared.

“What price he’s making a call on the pottery pigs?” Alleyn asked. “Or do you fancy the gallant Colonel and his lady? Hold on, Fox.”

He left Fox in the car, crossed the street, and walked rapidly past the Mews for some twenty yards. He then stopped and returned to a small house-decorator’s shop on the corner, where he was able to look through the double windows down the Mews past the Napoli and the opening into Capricorn Place, where the Cockburn-Montforts lived, to the pottery at the far end. Mr. Sheridan kept straight on, in and out of the rather sparse lighting, until he reached the pottery. Here he stopped at a side door, looked about him, and raised his hand to the bell. The door was opened on a dim interior by an unmistakable vast shape. Mr. Sheridan entered and the door was shut.

Alleyn returned to the car. “That’s it,” he said. “The piggery it is. Away we go. We’ve got to play this carefully. He’s on the alert, is Mr. S.”

At the garage where Mr. Whipplestone first met Lucy Lockett there was a very dark alley leading into a yard. Alleyn backed the car into it, stopped the engine, and put out the lights. He and Fox opened the doors, broke into drunken laughter, shouted indistinguishably, banged the doors, and settled down in their seats.

They had not long to wait before Colonel and Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort turned out of Capricorn Place and passed them on the far side of the Mews, she teetering on preposterous heels, he marching with the preternatural accuracy of the seasoned toper.

They were admitted into the same door by the same vast shape.

“One to come,” Alleyn said, “unless he’s there already.”

But he was not there already. Nobody else passed up or down the Mews for perhaps a minute. The clock in the Basilica struck nine and the last note was followed by approaching footsteps on their side of the street. Alleyn and Fox slid down in their seats. The steps, making the customary rather theatrical, rather disturbing effect of footfalls in dark streets, approached at a brisk pace, and Chubb passed by on his way to the pottery.

When he had been admitted Alleyn said: “We don’t, by the way, know if there are any more members, do we? Some unknown quantity?”

“What about it?”

“Wait and see, I suppose. It’s very tempting, you know, Br’er Fox, to let them warm up a bit and then make an official call and politely scare the pants off them. It would stop any further attempts from that quarter on the Boomer unless, of course, there’s a fanatic among them, and I wouldn’t put that past Chubb for one.”

“Do we try it, then?”

“Regretfully, we don’t. We haven’t got enough on any of them to make an arrest and we’d lose all chances of finally roping them in. Pity! Pity!”

“So what’s the form?”

“Well, I think we wait until they break up and then, however late the hour, we might even call upon Mr. Sheridan. Somebody coming,” Alleyn said.

“Your unknown quantity?”

“I wonder.”

It was a light footstep this time and approached rapidly on the far side of the Mews. There was a street lamp at the corner of Capricorn Place. The newcomer walked into its ambit and crossed the road coming straight towards them.

It was Samuel Whipplestone.

“Well, of course,” Alleyn thought. “He’s going for his evening constitutional, but why did he tell me he was dining with his sister?”

Fox sat quiet at his side. They waited in the dark for Mr. Whipplestone to turn and continue his walk.

But he stopped and peered directly into the alleyway. For a moment Alleyn had the uncanny impression that they looked straight into each other’s eyes, and then Mr. Whipplestone, slipping past the bonnet of the car, tapped discreetly on the driver’s window.