Bailey knelt down. The lead-in was disconnected from the tap on the heater. He turned on the tap in the pipe and blew down the tube.
“An air lock, you see. It works perfectly.”
H.J. was staring at Barry George. “But I don’t know about gas, H.J., H.J., tell them—”
“One moment.” Alleyn removed the towels that had been spread over the dressing-shelf, revealing a sheet of clean paper on which lay the rubber push-on connection.
“Will you take this lens, Bannington, and look at it. You’ll see that it’s stained a florid red. It’s a very slight stain but it’s unmistakably greasepaint. And just above the stain you’ll see a wiry hair. Rather like some sort of packing material, but it’s not that. It’s crêpe hair, isn’t it?”
The lens wavered above the paper.
“Let me hold it for you,” Alleyn said. He put his hand over H.J.’s shoulder and, with a swift movement, plucked a tuft from his false moustache and dropped it on the paper. “Identical, you see, ginger. It seems to be stuck to the connection with spirit-gum.”
The lens fell. H.J. twisted round, faced Alleyn for a second, and then struck him full in the face. He was a small man but it took three of them to hold him.
“In a way, sir, it’s handy when they have a smack at you,” said Detective Sergeant Thompson half an hour later. “You can pull them in nice and straightforward without any ‘will you come to the station and make a statement’ business.”
“Quite,” said Alleyn, nursing his jaw.
Mike said: “He must have gone to the room after Barry George and Miss Bourne were called.”
“That’s it. He had to be quick. The call-boy would be round in a minute and he had to be back in his own room.”
“But look here—what about motive?”
“That, my good Mike, is precisely why, at half-past one in the morning, we’re still in this miserable theatre. You’re getting a view of the duller aspect of homicide. Want to go home?”
“No. Give me another job.”
“Very well. About ten feet from the prompt-entrance, there’s a sort of garbage tin. Go through it.”
At seventeen minutes to two, when the dressing-rooms and passage had been combed clean and Alleyn had called a spell, Mike came to him with filthy hands. “Eureka,” he said, “I hope.”
They all went into Bannington’s room. Alleyn spread out on the dressing-table the fragments of paper that Mike had given him.
“They’d been pushed down to the bottom of the tin,” Mike said.
Alleyn moved the fragments about. Thompson whistled through his teeth. Bailey and Gibson mumbled together.
“There you are,” Alleyn said at last.
They collected round him. The letter that H. J. Bannington had opened at this same table six hours and forty-five minutes earlier, was pieced together like a jig-saw puzzle.
Dear H.J.
Having seen the monthly statement of my account, I called at my bank this morning and was shown a check that is undoubtedly a forgery. Your histrionic versatility, my dear H.J., is only equalled by your audacity as a calligraphist. But fame has its disadvantages. The teller has recognized you. I propose to take action.
“Unsigned,” said Bailey.
“Look at the card on the red roses in Miss Bourne’s room, signed C.C. It’s a very distinctive hand.” Alleyn turned to Mike. “Do you still want to be a policeman?”
“Yes.”
“Lord help you. Come and talk to me at the office tomorrow.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They went out, leaving a constable on duty. It was a cold morning. Mike looked up at the façade of the Jupiter. He could just make out the shape of the neon sign: i can find my way out by Anthony Gill.
When the telephone rang, Troy came in, sun-dazzled, from the cottage garden to answer it, hoping it would be a call from London.
“Oh,” said a strange voice uncertainly. “May I speak to Superintendent Alleyn, if you please?”
“I’m sorry. He’s away.”
“Oh, dear!” said the voice, crestfallen. “Er — would that be — am I speaking to Mrs. Alleyn?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Yes. Well, it’s Timothy Bates here, Mrs. Alleyn. You don’t know me,” the voice confessed wistfully, “but I had the pleasure several years ago of meeting your husband. In New Zealand. And he did say that if I ever came home I was to get in touch, and when I heard quite by accident that you were here—well, I was excited. But, alas, no good after all.”
“I am sorry,” Troy said. “He’ll be back, I hope, on Sunday night. Perhaps—”
“Will he! Come, that’s something! Because here I am at the Star and Garter, you see, and so—” The voice trailed away again.
“Yes, indeed. He’ll be delighted,” Troy said, hoping that he would.
“I’m a bookman,” the voice confided. “Old books, you know. He used to come into my shop. It was always such a pleasure.”
“But, of course!” Troy exclaimed. “I remember perfectly now. He’s often talked about it.”
“Has he? Has he, really! Well, you see, Mrs. Alleyn, I’m here on business. Not to sell anything, please don’t think that, but on a voyage of discovery; almost, one might say, of detection, and I think it might amuse him. He has such an eye for the curious. Not,” the voice hurriedly amended, “in the trade sense. I mean curious in the sense of mysterious and unusual. But I mustn’t bore you.”
Troy assured him that he was not boring her and indeed it was true. The voice was so much colored by odd little overtones that she found herself quite drawn to its owner. “I know where you are,” he was saying. “Your house was pointed out to me.”
After that there was nothing to do but ask him to visit. He seemed to cheer up prodigiously. “May I? May I, really? Now?”
“Why not?” Troy said. “You’ll be here in five minutes.”
She heard a little crow of delight before he hung up the receiver.
He turned out to be exactly like his voice—a short, middle-aged, bespectacled man, rather untidily dressed. As he came up the path she saw that with both arms he clutched to his stomach an enormous Bible. He was thrown into a fever over the difficulty of removing his cap.
“How ridiculous!” he exclaimed. “Forgive me! One moment.”
He laid his burden tenderly on a garden seat. “There!” he cried. “Now! How do you do!”
Troy took him indoors and gave him a drink. He chose sherry and sat in the window seat with his Bible beside him. “You’ll wonder,” he said, “why I’ve appeared with this unusual piece of baggage. I do trust it arouses your curiosity.”
He went into a long excitable explanation. It appeared that the Bible was an old and rare one that he had picked up in a job lot of books in New Zealand. All this time he kept it under his square little hands as if it might open of its own accord and spoil his story.
“Because,” he said, “the really exciting thing to me is not its undoubted authenticity but—” He made a conspiratorial face at Troy and suddenly opened the Bible. “Look!” he invited.
He displayed the flyleaf. Troy saw that it was almost filled with entries in a minute, faded copperplate handwriting.
“The top,” Mr. Bates cried. “Top left-hand. Look at that.”
Troy read: “Crabtree Farm at Little Copplestone in the County of Kent. Why, it comes from our village!”