Richard nodded and turned away.
“This evening,” Alleyn went on, “after Mr. Dakers left the Pegasus Bookshop, you, Colonel Warrender, also paid a call on Octavius Browne. Dusk had fallen but you were standing in the window when Octavius came in and seeing you against it he mistook you for his earlier visitor, who he thought must have returned. He was unable to say why he made this mistake, but I think I can account for it. Your heads are very much the same shape. The relative angles and distances from hairline to the top of the nose, from there to the tip and from the tip to the chin are almost identical. Seen in silhouette with the other features obliterated, your profiles must be strikingly alike. In full-face the resemblance disappears. Colonel Warrender has far greater width and a heavier jawline.”
“In these respects,” he said, “Mr. Dakers, I think, takes after his mother.”
“Well,” Alleyn said at last, after a long silence, “I’m glad, at least, that it seems I am not going to be knocked down.”
Warrender said, “I’ve nothing to say. Unless it’s to point out that, as things have come about, I’ve had no opportunity to speak to”—he lifted his head—“to my son.”
Richard said, “I don’t want to discuss it. I should have been told from the beginning.”
“Whereas,” Alleyn said, “you were told, weren’t you, by your mother this afternoon. You went upstairs with her when you returned from the Pegasus and she told you then.”
“Why!” Warrender cried out. “Why, why, why!”
“She was angry,” Richard said. “With me.” He looked at Alleyn. “You’ve heard or guessed most of it, apparently. She thought I’d conspired against her.”
“Yes?”
“Well — that’s all. That’s how it was.”
Alleyn waited. Richard drove his hands through his hair. “All right!” he cried out. “All right! I’ll tell you. I suppose I’ve got to, haven’t I? She accused me of ingratitude and disloyalty. I said I considered I owed her no more than I had already paid. I wouldn’t have said that if she hadn’t insulted Anelida. Then she came quite close to me and — it was horrible — I could see a nerve jumping under her cheek. She kept repeating that I owed her everything — everything, and that I’d insulted her by going behind her back. Then I said she’d no right to assume a controlling interest in either my friendships or my work. She said she had every right. And then it all came out. Everything. It happened because of our anger. We were both very angry. When she’d told me, she laughed as if she’d scored with the line of climax in a big scene. If she hadn’t done that I might have felt some kind of compassion or remorse or something. I didn’t. I felt cheated and sick and empty. I went downstairs and out into the streets and walked about trying to find an appropriate emotion. There was nothing but a sort of faint disgust.” He moved away and then turned to Alleyn. “But I didn’t murder my”—he caught his breath—“my brand-new mother. I’m not, it appears, that kind of bastard.”
Warrender said, “For God’s sake, Dicky!”
“Just for the record,” Richard said, “were there two people called Dakers? A young married couple, killed in a car on the Riviera? Australians, I’ve always been given to understand.”
“It’s — it’s a family name. My mother was a Dakers.”
“I see,” Richard said. “I just wondered. It didn’t occur to you to marry her, evidently.” He stopped short and a look of horror crossed his face. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he cried out. “Forgive me, Maurice, it wasn’t I who said that.”
“My dear chap, of course I wanted to marry her. She wouldn’t have it! She was at the beginning of her career. What could I give her? A serving ensign on a very limited allowance. She — naturally — she wasn’t prepared to throw up her career and follow the drum.”
“And — Charles?”
“He was in a different position. Altogether.”
“Rich? Able to keep her in the style to which she would like to become accustomed?”
“There’s no need,” Warrender muttered, “to put it like that.”
“Poor Charles!” Richard said and then suddenly, “Did he know?”
Warrender turned a painful crimson. “No,” he said. “It was — it was all over by then.”
“Did he believe in the Dakers story?”
“I think,” Warrender said after a pause, “he believed everything Mary told him.”
“Poor Charles!” Richard repeated, and then turned on Alleyn. “He’s not going to be told? Not now! It’d kill him. There’s no need — is there?”
“None,” Alleyn said, “that I can see.”
“And you!” Richard demanded of Warrender.
“Oh for God’s sake, Dicky!”
“No. Naturally. Not you.”
There was a long silence.
“I remember,” Richard said at last, “that she once told me it was you who brought them together. What ambivalent roles you both contrived to play. Restoration comedy at its most elaborate.”
Evidently they had forgotten Alleyn. For the first time they looked fully at each other.
“Funny,” Richard said. “I have wondered if Charles was my father. Some pre-marital indiscretion, I thought it might have been. I fancied I saw a likeness — the family one, of course. You and Charles are rather alike, aren’t you? I must say I never quite believed in the Dakers. But why did it never occur to me that she was my mother? It really was very clever of her to put herself so magnificently out of bounds.”
“I don’t know,” Warrender exclaimed, “what to say to you. There’s nothing I can say.”
“Never mind.”
“It need make no difference. To your work. Or to your marrying.”
“I really don’t know how Anelida will feel about it. Unless…” He turned, as if suddenly aware of him, to Alleyn. “Unless, of course, Mr. Alleyn is going to arrest me for matricide, which will settle everything very neatly, won’t it?”
“I shouldn’t,” Alleyn said, “depend upon it. Suppose you set about clearing yourself if you can. Can you?”
“How the hell do I know? What am I supposed to have done?”
“It’s more a matter of finding out what you couldn’t have done. Where did you lunch? Here?”
“No. At the Garrick. It was a business luncheon.”
“And after that?”
“I went to my flat and did some work. I’d got a typist in.”
“Until when?”
“Just before six. I was waiting for a long-distance call from Edinburgh. I kept looking at the time because I was running late. I was meant to be here at six to organize the drinks. At last I fixed it up for the call to be transferred to this number. As it was I ran late and Mary — and she was coming downstairs. The call came through at a quarter to seven just as I arrived.”
“Where did you take it?”
“Here in the study. Charles was there. He looked ill and I was worried about him. He didn’t seem to want to talk. I kept getting cut off. It was important, and I had to wait. She — wasn’t very pleased about that. The first people were arriving when I’d finished.”
“So what did you do?”
“Went into the drawing-room with Charles and did my stuff.”
“Had you brought her some Parma violets?”
“I? No. She hated violets.”
“Did you see them in her room?”
“I didn’t go up to her room. I’ve told you — I was here in the study.”
“When had you last been in her room?”