“Not ’alf,” agreed Gardener with emphasis.
“Have you got a sore foot?” Nigel inquired.
“Yes, I have. I told you somebody trod on it.”
“Somebody who smelt like Jacob Saint?”
“I only thought so. I wasn’t sure.”
“Look here,” said Nigel, “this is no joke. Alleyn ought to know about it.”
“Oh, help.”
“Well, he ought to, anyway. I’ll ring him up, if I may.”
“Where will you find him?”
Nigel paused and considered. Possibly Alleyn might not want him to disclose his whereabouts. Nigel did not even know if he would still be at Surbonadier’s flat. He looked up the number in the directory and dialled it.
“He may not be at home,” he said deceitfully. Again, he could hear the bell pealing in the flat in Gerald’s Row. Again there was no answer. He felt vaguely uneasy.
“Nobody there?” said Gardener.
“I could try the Yard,” mumbled Nigel. “But I’ll leave it for the moment. Let’s have another squint at that paper.”
He and Gardener spent the next hour in speculation on the authorship of the letter. Gardener said he didn’t think Saint would do it. Nigel said if he was rattled, there was no knowing what he would do.
“If he’s a murderer—” he began.
“I’m not sure that he is. Another view is that he’s scared I may know something of what Surbonadier found out about him, and thinks I may do exactly what I have done — come clean.”
“Did he know you were friendly with Surbonadier?”
“Yes, Arthur introduced us in those days. Afterwards, when I took to the boards, he saw me in the first decent part I played, and remembered me. That’s partly how I got my first shop under his management. Not nice to think of now. Arthur resented it very much. He used to tell people I’d got in on his family ticket. God, what a dirty game it is! Do you remember what I said about actors?”
“I do.”
“Look at the way they behaved last night, with Surbonadier lying dead on the stage. All of them acting their socks off — except Stephanie.”
Nigel looked at him curiously. He seemed to hear Alleyn’s sardonic “Lovely exit, wasn’t it?” after Miss Vaughan had left the stage. He remembered the curiously seductive note she struck afterwards, in her interview with the inspector. Even he, Alleyn, had stood longer than was necessary with his hand on her bruised shoulder. Nigel thought virtuously of his Angela and felt a little superior.
“I wonder what she’s doing?” Gardener said presently. “I wanted to go and see her to-night, but she said she’d ring up.”
“What’s she so frightened about?” Nigel blurted out. Gardener’s face whitened. The look that had been there that morning returned.
“Of course she’s frightened,” he said at last. “She thinks Alleyn realised Surbonadier was pestering her and threatening her. It wasn’t hard last night to see how the land lay. She always made nothing of it to me. Until this morning I didn’t realise myself what he was up to. This morning she showed me her shoulder, and told me that after I left her he struck her — the swine! My God, if I’d known that!”
“It’s damn’ lucky for you that you didn’t,” said Nigel. “And he’s dead now, Felix.”
“She told me Alleyn had seen the bruise. She thought Alleyn suspected her. She’s terribly highly strung and the shock has been almost overwhelming.”
“And you were afraid for her, too?”
“Yes — after this morning. Until then, selfish imbecile that I was, I thought only of myself. That they should even think of her! It’s monstrous.”
“Well, don’t worry. I haven’t heard one of them ever hint it. I tell you they are off on different tacks. I’d be breaking confidence if I said more than that And now, if you don’t mind, Felix, I’ll be off. It was a devilish late night last night and you look as if you wanted sleep too. Take a couple of aspirins and a peg and leave off worrying. Good night.”
“Good night, Nigel. We’ve never known each other particularly well, but I hope we may from now on. I’m rather grateful to you.”
“Bosh. Goodnight.”
It was half-past ten when Nigel got back to Chester Terrace, and he was, he discovered, dead tired. He had, however, a story to write for to-morrow, and he didn’t want to leave it till the morning.
Very wearily he sat down to his typewriter and ran in a sheet of paper. He thought for a moment and then began to tap at the keys:
“THE UNICORN MURDER.
“Fresh Developments
Saint Libel Case Recalled.”
As he worked his thoughts kept turning to Alleyn. The inspector ought to know about Felix. At last he reached out his hand and took up the telephone. Surely by this time Alleyn would be home. He dialled the number of his flat, rested his head on his hand and waited.
CHAPTER XV
Achilles’ Heel
After Nigel and Inspector Fox had gone out of the room, and the door was shut, Inspector Alleyn stood very still and listened to their footsteps dying away down the passage. He heard Fox speak to the constable at the entrance door, and a little later their voices floated up from the footpath beneath.
If an onlooker had been there, he might perhaps have supposed Alleyn’s thoughts were unpleasant ones. The inspector had the type of face that is sometimes described as “winged.” The corners of his mouth made two deep depressions such as a painter will render with a crisp upward stroke of the brush. His nostrils, too, slanted up, and so did the outside corners of his very dark eyebrows. It was an attractive and fastidious face and, when nobody watched him, a very expressive one. At the moment it suggested extreme distaste. One might have guessed that he had just done something that was repugnant to him, or that he was about to undertake a task which displeased him.
Alleyn looked at his watch, sighed, turned out the lights, and went to the window, where he was careful to stand behind the curtains. From here he could watch, unseen, the desultory traffic of Gerald’s Row. Perhaps only two minutes had passed since Nigel and Fox had gone. A solitary taxi came very slowly down the little street. It loitered past the flat. He had an aeroplane view of it, but he fancied that the occupant’s face was in an unusual and uncomfortable position, below the window, for all the world as though its owner were kneeling on the floor, enjoying a worm’s-eye view of the flat, and taking rather particular care not to be seen. At this Inspector Alleyn smiled sideways. He was trying to remember the exact location of the nearest telephone booth. The taxi disappeared and he moved away from the window, took out his cigarette-case, thought better of it, and pocketed it again. Three or four minutes passed. His meditations were uncannily checked by the bedside telephone, which came to life abruptly with a piercing double ring. Alleyn smiled rather more broadly, and sat on the bed with his hands in his pockets. The telephone rang twenty times and then inconsequently went dead. He returned to the window. It was now very quiet in the street, so that when someone came briskly on foot from Elizabeth Street, he heard the steps a long way off. Suddenly he drew back from the window, and with a very desolate groan, crawled under the bed, which was a low one. He was obliged to lie flat on his front. He rearranged the valance, which he had noted disgustedly was of rose-coloured taffeta. Then he lay perfectly still.
Presently a key turned in the entrance door to the flat, and whoever it was who came in must have taken off their shoes, because only the faintest sound, a kind of sensation of movement, told him someone was coming, step by stealthy step, along the passage. Then he heard the handle of the door turn and from under the edge of the valance, in the dim light reflected from the street lamps, he saw the door itself swing slowly open. In the shadow beyond a darker shadow moved forward. The faintest rustle told him that someone had come into the room. Another rustle and the scaly sound of curtain rings. The light from the street was blotted out. When the silence had become intolerable, the telephone above him rang out again shrilly. The bell pealed on and on. The bed above him sank down and touched his shoulders stealthily. The noise of the telephone changed into a stupidly coarse clatter. Something had been pressed down over it. Alleyn counted twenty more double rings before it stopped.