“My mate’s put Legge in his own room, sir,” said Oates.
“Good. He’d better stay with him and you’d better dip your nose in cold water before you resume duty. Then come and relieve Mr. Harper.”
Oates went into the bathroom. Alleyn opened Fox’s door and listened. Fox was snoring deeply and rhythmically. Alleyn closed the door softly and returned to the tap-room.
iii
It was the last time that he was to see that assembly gathered together in the private tap-room of the Plume of Feathers. He had been little over twenty-four hours in Ottercombe but, it seemed more like a week. The suspects in a case of murder become quickly and strangely familiar to the investigating officer. He has an aptitude for noticing mannerisms, tricks of voice, and of movement. Faces and figures make their impression quickly and sharply. Alleyn now expected, before he saw them, Cubitt’s trick of smiling lopsidedly, Parish’s habit of sticking out his jaw, Miss Darragh’s look of inscrutability, Will Pomeroy’s mulish blushes, and his father’s way of opening his eyes very widely. The movement of Nark’s head, slanted conceitedly, and his look of burning self-importance, seemed to be memories of a year rather than of days. Alleyn felt a little as if they were marionettes obeying a few simple jerks of their strings and otherwise inert and stupid. He felt wholeheartedly bored with the lot of them; the thought of another bout of interrogation was almost intolerable. Fox might have been killed. Reaction had set in, and Alleyn was sick at heart.
“Well,” he said crisply, “you may as well know what has happened. Between a quarter to one and five-past seven, somebody put poison in the decanter of sherry that was kept for our use. You will readily understand that we shall require a full account from each one of you of your movements after a quarter to one. Mr. Harper and I will see you in turn in the parlour. If you discuss the matter among yourselves it will be within hearing of Constable Oates, who will be on duty in this room. We’ll see you first if you please, Mr. Cubitt.”
But it was the usual exasperating job that faced him. None of them had a complete alibi. Each of them could have slipped unseen into the tap-room and come out again unnoticed. Abel had locked the bar-shutter during closing-hours but everyone knew where he kept his keys and several times when the bar was open it had been deserted. Cubitt said he was painting from two o’clock until six, when he returned for his evening meal. He had been one of the company in the taproom when Alleyn came in for the sherry, but had left immediately to meet Decima Moore on Coombe Head. The others followed with similar stories — except old Pomeroy, who frankly admitted he had sat in the tap-room for some time, reading his paper. Each of them denied being alone there at any time after Abel had decanted the sherry. An hour’s exhaustive enquiry failed to prove or disprove any of their statements. Last of all, Mr. Legge was brought down in a state of the profoundest dejection and made a series of protestations to the effect that he was being persecuted. He was a pitiful object and Alleyn’s feeling of nausea increased as he watched him. At last Alleyn said:
“Mr. Legge, we only arrived here last evening but, as you must realize, we have already made many enquiries. Of all the people we have interviewed, you alone have objected to the way we set about our job. Why?”
Legge looked at Alleyn without speaking. His lower lip hung loosely, his eyes, half-veiled, in that now familiar way, by his white lashes, looked like the eyes of a blind man. Only his hands moved restlessly. After a moment’s silence he mumbled something inaudible.
“What do you say?”
“It doesn’t matter. Everything I say is used against me.”
Alleyn looked at him in silence.
“I think,” he said at last, “that it is my duty to tell you that a dart bearing your fingerprints was sent to the Bureau early this morning. They have been identified and the result has been telephoned to us.”
Legge’s hands moved convulsively.
“They have been identified,” Alleyn repeated, “as those of Montague Thringle. Montague Thringle was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment for embezzlement, a sentence that was afterwards reduced to four years and was completed twenty-six months ago.” He paused. Legge’s face was clay-coloured. “You must have known we’d find out,” said Alleyn. “Why didn’t you tell me last night who you were?”
“Why? Why?” demanded Legge. “You know why. You know well enough. The very sight and sound of the police! Anathema! Questions, questions, questions! At me all the time. Man with a record! Hound him out! Tell everybody! Slam every door in his face. And you have the impertinence to ask me why I was silent. My God!”
“All right,” said Alleyn, “we’ll leave it at that. How did you spend your afternoon?”
“There you go!” cried Legge, half-crying, but still with that curious air of admonishment. “There you go, you see! Straight off. Asking me things like that. It’s atrocious.”
“Nonsense,” said Alleyn.
“Nonsense!” echoed Legge, in a sort of fury. He shook his finger in Alleyn’s face. “Don’t you talk like that to me, sir. Do you know who I am? Do you know that before my misfortune I was the greatest power in English finance? Let me tell you that there are only three men living who fully comprehended the events that brought about the holocaust of ’29 and ’30, and I am one of them. If I had not put my trust in titled imbeciles, if I had not been betrayed by a sulking moron, I should be in a position to send for you when I wished to command your dubious services, or dismiss them with a contemptuous fiddle-de-dee.”
This astonishing and ridiculous word was delivered with such venom that Alleyn was quite taken aback. Into his thoughts, with the appropriate logic of topsyturvy, popped the memory of a jigging line —
To shirk the task were fiddle-de-dee.
To shirk the task were fiddle-de—, fiddle-de—…
He pulled himself together, cautioned and tackled Mr. Legge, and at last got a statement from him. He had spent the afternoon packing his books, papers, and effects, and putting them in his car. He had intended to take the first load into his new room that evening. He had also written some letters. He offered, frantically, to show Alleyn the letters. Alleyn had already seen them and they amounted to nothing. He turned Legge over to Oates, whose nose was now plugged with cotton-wool.
“You’d better take him to the station,” said Alleyn.
“I demand bail,” cried Legge in a trembling voice.
“Mr. Harper will see about that,” said Alleyn. “You’re under arrest for a misdemeanour.”
“I didn’t kill him. I know what you’re up to. It’s the beginning of the end. I swear—”
“You are under arrest for assaulting police officers,” said Alleyn, wearily. “I will repeat the caution you have already heard.”
He repeated it and was devoutly thankful when Legge, in a condition of hysterical prostration, was led away. Harper, with Oates and his mate, was to drive him to Illington and lodge him in the police station.
“The Colonel’s at the station,” said Harper acidly. “That was him on the telephone while you were upstairs. His car’s broken down again. Why, in his position and with all his money, he doesn’t — oh well! He wants me to bring him back here, or you to come in. Which it’ll be? The man’ll talk us all dotty, wherever he is.”
“I’ll have another look at Fox,” said Alleyn. “If he’s awake, I’ll get him into bed and then follow you into Illington. I’d like the doctor to see him again.”
“There’ll be no need for that, sir, thank you.”
Alleyn spun round on his heel to see Fox, fully dressed and wearing his bowler hat, standing in the doorway.