Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

“You should have noted it in any case.”

“Sir.”

“What precisely did he say?”

“He said he had a message to deliver, sir. It was for the First Secretary. He produced it and I examined it, sir. It was addressed to the First Secretary and had ‘For His Excellency the President’s attention’ written in the corner. It was a fairly stout manilla envelope, sir, but the contents appeared to me to be slight, sir.”

“Well?”

“I said it was an unusual sort of time to deliver it. I said he could hand it over to me and I’d attend to it, sir, but he said he’d promised to deliver it personally. It was a photograph, he said, that the President had wanted developed and printed very particular and urgent and a special effort had been made to get it done and it was only processed half an hour ago. He said he’d been instructed to hand it to the night porter for the First Secretary.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. Well, I took it and put it over my torch, sir, and that showed up the shape of some rigid object like a cardboard folder inside it. There wasn’t any chance of it being one of those funny ones, sir, and he had got a special pass and so we allowed it and — well, sir, that’s all, really.”

“And you,” Alleyn said to the other man, “rang the bell?”

“Sir.”

“Anything said when the night porter answered it?”

“I don’t think he speaks English, sir. Him and the bearer had a word or two in the native language, I suppose it was. And then he just took delivery and shut the door and the bearer gave us a goodnight and left.”

Mr. Fox, throughout this interview, had gazed immovably, and to their obvious discomfort, at whichever of the constables was speaking. When they had finished he said in a sepulchral voice to nobody in particular that he wouldn’t be surprised if this matter wasn’t Taken Further, upon which their demeanour became utterly wooden.

Alleyn said: “You should have reported this at once. You’re bloody lucky Mr. Gibson doesn’t know about it”

They said in unison: “Thank you very much, sir.”

“For what?” Alleyn said.

“Will you pass it on to Fred Gibson?” Fox asked as they walked back the way they had come.

“The incident? Yes. But I won’t bear down on the handling of it. I ought to. Although it was tricky, that situation. He’s got the Embassy go-ahead with his special pass. The copper had been told that anybody carrying one was persona grata . He’d have been taking quite a chance if he’d refused.” Alleyn put his hand on Fox’s arm. “Look at that,” he said. “Where did that come from?”

At the far end of the long alleyway, in deep shadow, someone moved away from them. Even as they glimpsed it, the figure slipped round the corner and out of sight. They could hear the soft thud of hurrying feet. They sprinted down the alley and turned the corner, but there was no-one to be seen.

“Could have come out of one of these houses and be chasing after a cab,” Fox said.

“They’re all dark.”

“Yes.”

“And no sound of a cab. Did you get an impression?”

“No. Hat. Overcoat. Rubber soles. Trousers. I wouldn’t even swear to the sex. It was too quick.”

“Damn,” Alleyn said, and they walked on in silence.

“It would be nice to know what was in the envelope,” Fox said at last.

“That’s the understatement of a lifetime.”

“Will you ask?”

“You bet I will.”

“The President?”

“Who else? And at the crack of dawn, I daresay, like it or lump it. Fox,” Alleyn said, “I’ve been visited by a very disturbing notion.”

“Is that so, Mr. Alleyn?” Fox placidly rejoined.

“And I’ll be obliged if you’ll just listen while I run through all the disjointed bits of information we have about this horrid fat man and see if some kind of pattern comes through in the end.”

“Be pleased to,” said Fox.

He listened with calm approval as they walked back into the now deserted Capricorns to pick up their car. When they were seated in it Alleyn said: “There you are, Br’er Fox. Now then. By and large: what emerges?”

Fox laid his broad palm across his short moustache and then looked at it as if he expected it to have picked up an impression.

“I see what you’re getting at,” he said. “I think.”

“What I’m getting at,” Alleyn said, “is— fairly simply — this—”

Alleyn’s threat to talk to the Boomer at the crack of dawn was not intended to be, nor was it, taken literally. In the event, he himself was roused by Mr. Gibson, wanting to know if it really was true that the President was giving Troy another sitting at half-past nine. When Alleyn confirmed this, Gibson’s windy sighs whistled in the receiver. He said he supposed Alleyn had seen the morning’s popular press, and on Alleyn’s saying not yet, informed him that in each instance the front page carried a by-lined three-column spread with photographs of yesterday’s visit by the Boomer. Gibson in a dreary voice began to quote some of the more offensive pieces of journalese. “Rum Proceedings? Handsome Super’s Famous Wife and African Dictator.” Alleyn, grinding his teeth, begged him to desist and he did so, merely observing that all things considered he wondered why Alleyn fancied the portrait proposition.

Alleyn felt it would be inappropriate to say that stopping the portrait would in itself be a form of homicide. He switched to the Sanskrit incident and learnt that it had been reported to Gibson. Alleyn outlined his and Fox’s investigations and the conculsions he had drawn from them.

“It seems to look,” Mr. Gibson mumbled, “as if things might be coming to a head.”

“Keep your fingers crossed. I’m getting a search warrant. On the off-chance.”

“Always looks ‘active,’ applying for a warrant. By the way, the body’s gone.”

“What?”

“The deceased. Just before first light. It was kept very quiet. Back entrance. ‘Nondescript’ van. Special plane. All passed off nice and smooth. One drop of grief the less,” said Mr. Gibson.

“You may have to keep obbo at the airport, Fred. Outgoing planes for Ng’ombwana.”

“Any time. You name it,” he said dismally.

“From now. We’ll be in touch,” Alleyn said, and they rang off.

Troy was in the studio making statements on the background. He told her that yesterday’s protective measures would be repeated and that if possible he himself would be back before the Boomer arrived.

“That’ll be fine,” she said. “Sit where you did before, Rory, would you, darling? He’s marvellous when he focusses on you.”

“You’ve got the cheek of the devil. Do you know that everybody but you thinks I’m out of my senses to let you go on with this?”

“Yes, but then you’re you, aren’t you, and you know how things are. And truly — it is — isn’t it? — going — you know? Don’t say it, but — isn’t it?”

He said: “It is. Strange as it may sound, I hardly dare look. It’s leapt out of the end of your brush.”

She gave him a kiss. “I am grateful,” she said. “You know, don’t you?”

He went to the Yard in a pleasant if apprehensive state of mind and found a message from Mr. Whipplestone asking him to ring without delay. He put through the call and was answered at once.

“I thought you should know,” Mr. Whipplestone began, and the phrase had become familiar. He hurried on to say that, confronted by a leaking water-pipe, he had called at his land agents, Messrs. Able and Virtue, at ten past nine o’clock that morning to ask if they could recommend a plumber. He found Sanskrit already there and talking to the young man with Pre-Raphaelite hair. When he saw Mr. Whipplestone, Sanskrit had stopped short and then said in a counter-tenor voice that he would leave everything to them and they were to do the best they could for him.