Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

For a second or two he looked very angry indeed. Then he said: “I have no idea. It was a ridiculous statement. I have ordered no photographs.”

Alleyn said: “Mr. Gibson, I wonder if you and Mr. Fox will excuse us?”

They went out with a solemn preoccupied air and shut the door after them.

“Well, Rory?” said the Boomer.

“He was an informer,” Alleyn said, “wasn’t he? He was what Mr. Gibson would call, so unprettily but so appropriately, a snout.”

The Boomer had always, in spite of all his natural exuberance, commanded a talent for unexpected silences. He now displayed it. He neither moved nor spoke during a long enough pause for the clock in the study to clear its throat and strike ten. He then clasped his white gloved hands, rested his chin on them and spoke.

“In the old days,” he said, and his inordinately resonant voice, taking on a timbre of a recitative, lent the phrase huge overtones of nostalgia, “at Davidson’s, I remember one wet evening when we talked together, as youths of that age will, of everything under the sun. We talked, finally, of government and the exercise of power and suddenly, without warning, we found ourselves on opposite sides of a great gap — a ravine. There was no bridge. We were completely cut off from each other. Do you remember?”

“I remember, yes.”

“I think we were both surprised and disturbed to find ourselves in this situation. And I remember I said something like this: that we had stumbled against a natural barrier that was as old as our separate evolutionary processes — we used big words in those days. And you said there were plenty of territories we could explore without meeting such barriers and we’d better stick to them. And so, from that rainy evening onwards, we did. Until now. Until this moment.”

Alleyn said: “I mustn’t follow you along these reminiscent byways. If you think for a moment, you’ll understand why. I’m a policeman on duty. One of the first things we are taught is the necessity for non-involvement. I’d have asked to be relieved of this job if I had known what shape it would take.”

“What shape has it taken? What have you — uncovered?”

“I’ll tell you. I think that the night before last a group of people, some fanatical, each in his or her own degree a bit demented and each with a festering motive of sorts, planned to have you assassinated in such a way that it would appear to have been done by your spear-carrier — your mlinzi: it’s about these people that I’d like to talk to you. First of all, Sanskrit. Am I right or wrong in my conjecture about Sanskrit? Is he an informer?”

“There, my dear Rory, I must plead privilege.”

“I thought you might. All right. The Cockburn-Montforts. His hopes of military glory under the new regime came unstuck. He is said to have been infuriated. Has he to thank you, personally, for his compulsory retirement?”

“Oh, yes,” said the Boomer coolly. “I got rid of him. He had become an alcoholic and quite unreliable. Besides, my policy was to appoint Ng’ombwanans to the senior ranks. We have been through all this.”

“Has he threatened you?”

“Not to my face. He was abusive at a personal interview I granted. I have been told that in his cups he uttered threats. It was all very silly and long forgotten.”

“Not on his part, perhaps. You knew he had been invited to the reception?”

“At my suggestion. He did good service in the past. We gave him a medal for it.”

“I see. Do you remember the Gomez case?”

For a moment, he looked surprised. “Of course I remember it,” he said. “He was a very bad man. A savage. A murderer. I had the pleasure of procuring him a fifteen-year stretch. It should have been a capital charge. He—” The Boomer pulled up short. “What of him?” he asked.

“A bit of information your sources didn’t pass on to you, it seems. Perhaps they didn’t know. Gomez has changed his name to Sheridan and lives five minutes away from your Embassy. He was not at your party but he is a member of this group, and from what I have heard of him he’s not going to let one setback defeat him. He’ll try again.”

“That I can believe,” said the Boomer. For the first time he looked disconcerted.

Alleyn said: “He watched this house from over the way while you sat to Troy yesterday morning. It’s odds on he’s out there again, now. He’s being very closely observed. Would you say he’s capable of going it alone and lobbing a bomb into your car or through my windows?”

“If he’s maintained the head of steam he worked up against me at his trial—” the Boomer began and checked himself. He appeared to take thought and then, most unconvincingly, let out one of his great laughs. “Whatever he does,” he said, “if he does anything, it will be a fiasco. Bombs ! No, really, it’s too absurd!”

For an alarming second or two Alleyn felt himself to be at explosion point. With difficulty he controlled his voice and suggested, fairly mildly, that if any attempts made upon the Boomer turned out to be fiascos it would be entirely due to the vigilance and efficiency of the despised Gibson and his men.

“Why don’t you arrest this person?” the Boomer asked casually.

“Because, as you very well know, we can’t make arrests on what would appear to be groundless suspicion. He has done nothing to warrant an arrest.”

The Boomer scarcely seemed to listen to him, a non-reaction that didn’t exactly improve his temper.

“There is one more member of this coterie,” Alleyn said. “A servant called Chubb. Is he known to you?”

“Chubb? Chubb? Ah! Yes, by the way! I believe I have heard of Chubb. Isn’t he Mr. Samuel Whipplestone’s man? He came up with drinks while I was having a word with his master, who happened to mention it. You’re not suggesting—!”

“That Sam Whipplestone’s involved? Indeed I’m not. But we’ve discovered that the man is.”

The Boomer seemed scarcely to take this in. The enormous creature suddenly leapt to his feet. For all his great size he was on them, like an animal, in one co-ordinated movement.

“What am I thinking of!” he exclaimed. “To bring myself here! To force my attention upon your wife with this silly dangerous person who, bombs or no bombs, is liable to make an exhibition of himself and kick up dirt in the street. I will take myself off at once. Perhaps I may see her for a moment to apologize and then I vanish.”

“She won’t take much joy of that,” Alleyn said. “She has gone a miraculously long way in an unbelievably short time with what promises to be the best portrait of her career. It’s quite appalling to think of it remaining unfinished.”

The Boomer gazed anxiously at him and then, with great simplicity, said: “I get everything wrong.”

He had made this observation as a solitary black schoolboy in his first desolate term and it had marked the beginning of their friendship. Alleyn stopped himself from saying: “Don’t look like that,” and instead picked up the great bouquet of roses, put them in his hands, and said: “Come and see her.”

“Shall I?” he said, doubtful but greatly cheered. “Really? Good!”

He strode to the door and flung it open. “Where is my mlinzi ?” he loudly demanded.

Fox, who was in the hall, said blandly: “He’s outside Mrs. Alleyn’s studio, Your Excellency.. He seemed to think that was where he was wanted.”

“We may congratulate ourselves,” Alleyn said, “that he hasn’t brought his spear with him.”

Alleyn had escorted the Boomer to the studio and seen him established on his throne. Troy, tingling though she was with impatience, had praised the roses and put them in a suitable pot. She had also exultantly pounced upon the Afghan hound, who, with an apparent instinct for aesthetic values, had mounted the throne and posed himself with killing effect against the Boomer’s left leg and was in process of being committed to canvas.