Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

Alleyn turned to face the vast rump of her brother, clothed in a camel overcoat, which was all that could be seen of him.

“Is it the same?” Gibson asked.

“Yes. A pottery pig. The head broke off on the first attack and the rest fell in the box after the second.”

“But — how exactly—?” Fox said.

“Look what’s on the table. Under her hand.”

It was a sheet of headed letter paper. “The Piggie Potterie. 12, Capricorn Mews, S.W.3.” Written beneath this legend was: “To Messrs. Able and Virtue. Kindly…” and no more.

“A green ball-point,” Alleyn said. “It’s still in her right hand.”

Fox touched the hand. “Still warm,” he said.

“Yes.”

There was a checkered cloth of sorts near the kiln. Alleyn masked the terrible head with it. “One of the really bad ones,” he said.

“What was he doing?” Fox asked.

“Stowing away the remaining pigs. Doubled up, and reaching down into the packing case.”

“So you read the situation — how?”

“Like this, unless something else turns up to contradict it. She’s writing. He’s putting pigs from the bench into the packing case. Someone comes between them. Someone who perhaps has offered to help. Someone, at any rate, whose presence doesn’t disturb them. And this person picks up a pig, deals two mighty downward blows, left and right, quick as you please, and walks out.”

Gibson said angrily: “Walks out! When? And when did he walk in ? I’ve had these premises under close observation for twelve hours.”

“Until the bomb scare, Fred.”

“Sergeant Jacks stayed put.”

“With a traffic jam building up between him and the pottery.”

“By God, this is a gutty job,” said Gibson.

“And the gallant Colonel was on the doorstep,” Alleyn added.

“I reckon he wouldn’t have been any the wiser,” Fox offered, “if the Brigade of Guards had walked in and out.”

“We’ll see about that,” Alleyn said.

A silence fell between them. The room was oppressively warm and airless. Flies buzzed between the window curtains and the glass. One of them darted out and made like a bullet for the far end.

With startling unexpectedness the telephone on the desk rang. Alleyn wrapped his handkerchief round his hand and lifted the receiver.

He gave the number, speaking well above his natural level. An unmistakably Ng’ombwanan voice said: “It is the Embassy. You have not kept your appointment.”

Alleyn made an ambiguous falsetto noise.

“I said,” the voice insisted, “you have not kept your appointment. To collect the passports. Your plane leaves at five-thirty.”

Alleyn whispered: “I was prevented. Please send them. Please.”

A long pause.

“Very well. It is not convenient but very well. They will be put into your letter-box. In a few minutes. Yes?”

He said nothing and heard a deep sound of impatience and the click of the receiver being replaced.

He hung up. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “we now know that the envelope we saw Sanskrit deliver at the Embassy contained their passports. I’d got as much already from the President. In a few minutes they’ll be dropping them in. He failed to keep his appointment to collect.”

Fox looked at the upturned remains of Sanskrit. “He could hardly help himself,” he said. “Could he?”

The front doorbell rang. Alleyn looked through the slit in the curtains. A car had arrived with Bailey and Thompson, their driver and their gear. A smallish crowd had been moved down the Mews into the Passage.

The constable in the hallway admitted Bailey and Thompson. Alleyn said: “The lot. Complete coverage. Particularly the broken pottery.”

Thompson walked carefully past the partition into the alcove and stopped short.

“Two, eh?” he said and unshipped his camera.

“Go ahead,” Alleyn said.

Bailey went to the table and looked incredulously from the enormous bodies to Alleyn, who nodded and turned his back. Bailey delicately lifted the checked cloth and said: “Cor!”

“Not pretty,” Alleyn said.

Bailey, shocked into a unique flight of fancy, said: “It’s kind of not real. Like those blown-up affairs they run in fun shows. Giants. Gone into the horrors.”

“It’s very much like that,” Alleyn said. “Did you hear if they’d got through to Sir James?”

“Yes, Mr. Alleyn. On his way.”

“Good. All right. Push on with it, you two.” He turned to Gibson and Fox. “I suggest,” he said, “that we let that lot upstairs have a look at this scene.”

“Shock tactics?” Gibson asked.

“Something like that. Agreed?”

“This is your ground, not mine,” said Gibson, still dully resentful. “I’m only meant to be bloody security.”

Alleyn knew it was advisable to disregard these plaints. He said: “Fox, would you go upstairs? Take the copper in the hall with you. Leave him in the room and have a quiet word on the landing with the man who’s been with them. If he’s got anything I ought to hear, hand it on to me. Otherwise, just stick with them for a bit, would you? Don’t give a clue as to what’s happened. All right?”

“I think so,” said Fox placidly and went upstairs.

Bailey’s camera clicked and flashed. Miss Sanskrit’s awful face started up and out in a travesty of life. Thompson collected pottery shards and laid them out on the far end of the work table. More exploratory flies darted down the room. Alleyn continued to watch through the curtains.

A Ng’ombwanan in civilian dress drove up to the door, had a word with the constable on guard, and pushed something through the letter-box. Alleyn heard the flap of the clapper. The car drove away and he went into the hall and collected the package.

“What’s that, then?” Gibson asked.

Alleyn opened it: two passports elaborately stamped and endorsed and a letter on Embassy paper in Ng’ombwanan.

“Giving them the V.I.P. treatment, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Alleyn said and pocketed the lot.

Action known as “routine” was now steadily under way. Sir James Curtis and his secretary arrived, Sir James remarking a little acidly that he would like to know this time whether he would be allowed to follow the usual procedure and hold his damned post mortems if, when and where he wanted them. On being shown the subjects he came as near to exhibiting physical repulsion as Alleyn had ever seen him and asked appallingly if they would provide him with bulldozers.

He said that death had probably occurred within the hour, agreed with Alleyn’s reading of the evidence, listened to what action he proposed to take, and was about to leave when Alleyn said: “There’s a former record of drug-pushing against the man. No sign of them taking anything themselves, I suppose?”

“I’ll look out for it but they don’t often, do they?”

“Do we expect to find blood on the assailant?”

Sir James considered this. “Not necessarily, I think,” he said. “The size of the weapon might form a kind of shield in the case of the woman and the position of the head in the man.”

“Might the weapon have been dropped or hurled down on the man? They’re extremely heavy, those things.”

“Very possible.”

“I see.”

“You’ll send these monstrosities along then, Rory? Good day to you.”

When he’d gone, Fox and the constable who had been on duty upstairs came down.

“Thought we’d better wait till Sir James had finished,” ’ Fox said. “I’ve been up there in the room with them. Chubb’s very quiet but you can see he’s put out.’ ”

This, in Fox’s language, could mean anything from being; irritated to going berserk or suicidal. “He breaks out every now and then,” he went on, “asking where the Sanskrits are and why this lot’s being kept. I asked him what he’d wanted to see them for and he comes out with that he didn’t want to see them. He reckons he was on his way back from the chemist’s by way of Capricorn Passage and just ran into the Colonel and Mr. Sheridan. The Colonel was in such a bad way, Chubb makes out, he was trying to get him to let himself be taken home, but all the Colonel would do was lean on the bell.”