“That bloody sergeant in the bog.”
“All right. But if Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort’s got it straight, the sergeant wouldn’t have stopped him in the dark, wherever she was.”
“I told them. I told these bastards they shouldn’t have the blackout.”
“But,” said Fox, in his reasonable way, “the gun-man didn’t do the job anyway. There’s that aspect, Mr. Gibson, isn’t there?”
Gibson didn’t answer this. He turned around and said to Alleyn: “We’ve got to find out if the President’s available to see the D.C.”
“When?”
“He’s on his way in from Kent. Within the hour.”
“I’ll find out.” Alleyn turned to Mr. Whipplestone. “I can’t tell you, Sam, how much obliged to you I am,” he said. “If it’s not asking too much, could you bear to write out an account of that black — in both senses — charade in there while it’s still fresh in your mind? I’m having another go at the great panjandrum in the library.”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Whipplestone. “I’d like to.”
So he was settled down with writing materials and immediately took on the air of being at his own desk in his own rather rarified office with a secretary in deferential attendance.
“What’s horrible for us, Fred?” Alleyn asked. It was a regulation enquiry for which he was known at the Yard.
“We’ve got that lot from the tent party still waiting. Except the ones who obviously hadn’t a clue about anything. And,” Gibson added a little awkardly, “Mrs. Alleyn. She’s gone, of course.”
“I can always put her through the hoops at home.”
“And — er,” said Gibson still more awkwardly, “there is — er — your brother.”
“What!” Alleyn shouted. “George! You don’t tell me you’ve got George sitting on his fat bottom waiting for the brutal police bit?”
“Well—”
“Mrs. Alleyn and Sir George,” said Fox demurely. “And we’re not allowed to mention coincidence.”
“Old George,” Alleyn pondered, “what a lark! Fox, you might press on with statements from that little lot. Including George. While I have another go at the Boomer. What about you, Fred?”
“Get on with the bloody routine, I suppose. Could you lend me these two,” he indicated Bailey and Thompson, “for the ladies’ conveniences? Not that there’s much chance of anything turning up there. Still, we’ve got this Luger-merchant roaming round somewhere in the establishment. We’re searching for the bullet, of course, and that’s no piece of cake. Seeing you,” he said morosely, and walked out.
“You’d better get on with the loo,” Alleyn said to Bailey and Thompson, and himself returned to the library.
“Look,” Alleyn said, “it’s this way. You — Your Excellency — can, as of course you know, order us off whenever you feel like it. As far as enquiries inside the Embassy are concerned, we can become persona non grata at the drop of a hat and as such would have to limit our activities, of which you’ve no doubt formed an extremely poor opinion, to looking after your security whenever you leave these premises. We will also follow up any lines of enquiry that present themselves outside the Embassy. Quite simply it’s a matter of whether or not you wish us to carry on as we are or make ourselves scarce. Colonel Sinclaire, the Deputy Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is on his way. He hopes he may be allowed to wait upon you. No doubt he will express his deep regrets and put the situation before you in more or less the same terms I have used.”
For the first time since they had renewed their acquantance, Alleyn found a kind of hesitancy in the Boomer’s manner. He made as if to speak, checked himself, looked hard at Alleyn for a moment, and then began to pace up and down the library with the magnificent action that really did recall clichés about caged panthers.
At last he stopped in front of Alleyn and abruptly took him by the arms. “What,” he demanded, “did you think of our enquiry? Tell me.”
“It was immensely impressive,” Alleyn said at once.
“Yes? You found it so? But you think it strange, don’t you, that I, who have eaten my dinners and practised my profession as a barrister, should subscribe to such a performance. After all, it was not much like the proceedings of the British coroner’s inquest?”
“Not conspicuously like. No.”
“No. And yet, my dear Rory, it told me a great deal more than would have been elicited by that highly respectable court.”
“Yes?” Alleyn said politely. And with a half-smile: “Am I to know what it told Your Excellency?”
“It told My Excellency that my nkuki mtu mwenye—my mlinzi, my man with the spear — spoke the truth.”
“I see.”
“You are non-committal. You want to know how I know?”
“If it suits you to tell me.”
“I am,” announced the Boomer, “the son of a paramount chief. My father and his and his, back into the dawn, were paramount chiefs. If this man, under oath to protect me, had been guilty of murdering my innocent and loyal servant he could not have uncovered the body before me and declared his innocence. Which is what he did. It would not be possible.”
“I see.”
“And you would reply that such evidence is not admissible in a British court of law.”
“It would be admissible, I daresay. It could be eloquently pleaded by able counsel. It wouldn’t be accepted, ipso facto, as proof of innocence. But you know that as well as I do.”
“Tell me this. It is important for me. Do you believe what I have said?”
“I think I do,” Alleyn said slowly. “You know your people. You tell me it is so. Yes. I’m not sure but I am inclined to believe you are right.”
“Ah!” said the Boomer. “So now we are upon our old footing. That is good.”
“But I must make it clear to you. Whatever I may or may not think has no bearing on the way I’ll conduct this investigation: either inside the Embassy, if you’ll have us here, or outside it. If there turns out to be cogent evidence, in our book, against this man, we’ll follow it up.”
“In any case, the event having taken place in this Embassy, on his own soil, he could not be tried in England,” said the Boomer.
“No. Whatever we find, in that sense, is academic. He would be repatriated.”
“And this person who fires off German weapons in ladies’ lavatories. You say he also is black.”
“Mrs. Cockburn-Montfort says so.”
*’A stupid woman.”
“Tolerably so, I’d have thought.”
“It would be better if her husband beat her occasionally and left her at home,” said the Boomer with one of his gusts of laughter.
“I should like to know, if it isn’t too distressing for you to speak of him, something of the Ambassador himself. Did you like him very much? Was he close to you? Those sorts of questions?”
The Boomer dragged his great hand across his mouth, made a long rumbling sound in his chest, and sat down.
“I find it difficult,” he said at last, “to answer your question. What sort of man was he? A fuddy-duddy, as we used to say. He has come up, in the English sense, through the ranks. The peasant class. At one time he was a nuisance. He saw himself staging some kind of coup. It was all rather ridiculous. He had certain administrative abilities but no real authority. That sort of person.”
Disregarding this example of Ng’ombwanan snob-thinking, Alleyn remarked that the Ambassador must have been possessed of considerable ability to have got where he did. The Boomer waved a concessionary hand and said that the trend of development had favoured his advancement.