Ngaio Marsh - Black As He Is Painted

“What about the Colonel?”

“It doesn’t really make sense. He’s beyond it. He said something or another about Sanskrit being a poisonous specimen who ought to be court-martialled.”

“And Gomez-Sheridan?”

“He’s taking the line of righteous indignation. Demands an explanation. Will see there’s information laid in the right quarters and we haven’t heard the last of it. You’d think it was all quite ordinary except for a kind of twitch under his left eye. They all keep asking where the Sanskrits are.”

“It’s time they found out,” Alleyn said, and to Bailey and Thompson: “There’s a smell of burnt leather. We’ll have to rake out the furnace.”

“Looking for anything in particular, Mr. Alleyn?”

“No. Well — no. Just looking. For traces of anything anyone wanted to destroy. Come on.”

He and Fox went upstairs.

As he opened the door and went in he got the impression that Gomez had leapt to his feet. He stood facing Alleyn with his bald head sunk between his shoulders and his eyes like black boot-buttons in his white kid face. He might have been an actor in a bad Latin-American film.

At the far end of the room Chubb stood facing the window with the dogged, conditioned look of a soldier in detention, as if whatever he thought or felt or had done must be thrust back behind a mask of conformity.

Colonel Cockburn-Montfort lay in an armchair with his mouth open, snoring profoundly and hideously. He would have presented a less distasteful picture, Alleyn thought, if he had discarded the outward showing of an officer and — ambiguous addition — gentleman: the conservative suit, the signet ring on the correct finger, the handmade brogues, the regimental tie, the quietly elegant socks and, lying on the floor by his chair, the hat from Jermyn Street — all so very much in order. And Colonel Cockburn-Montfort so very far astray.

Gomez began at once: “You are the officer in charge of these extraordinary proceedings, I believe. I must ask you to inform me, at once, why I am detained here without reason, without explanation or apology.”

“Certainly,” Alleyn said. “It is because I hope you may be able to help us in our present job.”

“Police parrot talk!” he spat out, making a great thing of the plosives. The muscle under his eye flickered.

“I hope not,” Alleyn said.

“What is this ‘present job’?”

“We are making enquiries about the couple living in these premises. Brother and sister. Their name is Sanskrit.”

“ Where are they !”

“They haven’t gone far.”

“Are they in trouble?” he asked, showing his teeth.

“Yes.”

“I am not surprised. They are criminals. Monsters.”

The Colonel snorted and opened his eyes. “What!” he said. “Who are you talking ’bout? Monsters?”

Gomez made a contemptuous noise. “Go to sleep,” he said. “You are disgusting.”

“I take ’ception that remark, sir,” said the Colonel, and sounded exactly like Major Bloodknock, long ago. He shut his eyes.

“How do you know they are criminals?” Alleyn asked.

“I have reliable information,” said Gomez.

“From where?”

“From friends in Africa.”

“In Ng’ombwana?”

“One of the so-called emergent nations. I believe that is the name.”

“You ought to know,” Alleyn remarked, “seeing that you spent so long there.” And he thought: “He really is rather like an adder.”

“You speak nonsense,” Gomez lisped.

“I don’t think so, Mr. Gomez.”

Chubb, by the window, turned and gaped at him.

“My name is Sheridan,” Gomez said loudly.

“If you prefer it.”

“ ’Ere!” Chubb said with some violence. “What is all this? Names !”

Alleyn said: “Come over here, Chubb, and sit down. I’ve got something to say to all of you and for your own sakes you’d better listen to it. Sit down. That’s right. Colonel Cockburn-Montfort—”

“Cert’nly,” said the Colonel, opening his eyes.

“Can you follow me or shall I send for a corpse-reviver?”

“ ’Course I can follow you. F’what it’s worth.”

“Very well. I’m going to put something to the three of you and it’s this. You are members of a coterie which is motivated by racial hatred, more specifically, hatred of the Ng’ombwanan people in particular. On the night before last you conspired to murder the President.”

Gomez said, “What is this idiot talk!”

“You had an informant in the Embassy: the Ambassador himself, who believed that on the death of the President and with your backing he would achieve a coup d’état and assume power. In return, you, Mr. Gomez, and you, Colonel Montfort, were to be reinstated in Ng’ombwana.”

The Colonel waved his hand as if these statements were too trivial to merit consideration. Gomez, his left ankle elegantly poised on his right thigh, watched Alleyn over his locked fingers. Chubb, wooden, sat bolt upright on the edge of his chair.

“The Sanskrits, brother and sister,” Alleyn went on, “were also members of the clique. Miss Sanskrit produced your medallion in her pottery downstairs. They, however, were double agents. From the time the plan was first conceived to the moment of its execution and without the knowledge of the Ambassador, every move was being conveyed by the Sanskrits back to the Ng’ombwanan authorities. I think you must have suspected something of the sort when your plan miscarried. I think that last night after your meeting here broke up, one of the group followed Sanskrit to the Embassy and from a distance saw him deliver an envelope. He had passed by your house, Colonel Montfort.”

“I don’t go out at night much nowadays,” the Colonel said, rather sadly.

“Your wife perhaps? It wouldn’t be the first time you’d delegated one of the fancy touches to her. Well, it’s of no great matter. I think the full realization of what the Sanskrits had done really dawned this morning when you learned that they were shutting up shop and leaving.”

“Have they made it!” Chubb suddenly demanded. “Have they cleared out? Where are they?”

“To return to the actual event. Everything seemed to go according to plan up to the moment when, after the shot was fired and the guests’ attention had been deflected, you, Chubb, made your assault on the spear-carrier. You delivered the chop from behind, probably standing on a subsequently overturned chair to do so. At the crucial moment you were yourself attacked from the rear by the Ng’ombwanan servant. He was a little slow off the mark. Your blow fell, not as intended on the spearman’s arm but on his collar-bone. He was still able to use his spear and he did use it, with both hands and full knowledge of what he was doing, on the Ambassador.”

Alleyn looked at the three men. There was no change in their posture or their expressions, but a dull red had crept into Chubb’s face, and the Colonel’s (which habitually looked as if it had reached saturation point in respect of purple) seemed to darken. They said nothing.

“I see I’ve come near enough the mark for none of you to contradict me,” Alleyn remarked.

“On the contrary,” Gomez countered. “Your entire story is a fantasy and a libel. It is too farcical to merit a reply.”

“Well, Chubb?”

“I’m not answering the charge, sir. Except what I said before. I was clobbered.”

“Colonel?”

“What? No comment. No bloody comment.”

“Why were you all trying to get in here half an hour ago?”

“No comment,” they said together, and Chubb added his former statement that he’d had no intention of calling on the Sanskrits but had merely stopped off to offer his support to the Colonel and take him home.