“The accent’s improving, Fox.”
“I don’t get the practice. About this business, though. In a manner of speaking, sir, I fancy you’ll want to consult Mrs. Alleyn. She’s with you, evidently.”
“What is it?” Troy asked quickly. “I can hear him. What is it?”
“Well, Fox,” said Alleyn after a pause, “what is it?”
“Concerning the late Sir Henry Ancred, sir. I’ll explain when I see you. There’s been an Anonymous Letter.”
iv
“Coincidence,” said Fox, putting on his spectacles and flattening out a sheet of paper on his knee, “is one of the things you get accustomed to in our line of business, as I think you’ll agree, sir. Look at the way one of our chaps asked for a lift in the Gutteridge case. Look at the Thompson-Bywaters case—”
“For the love of heaven!” Alleyn cried, “let us admit coincidence without further parley. It’s staring us in the face. It’s a bloody quaint coincidence that my wife should have been staying in this wretched dump, and there’s an end of it.”
He glanced at Fox’s respectable, grave, and attentive face. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s no good expecting me to be reasonable over this business. Troy’s had one bad enough experience of the nastiest end of our job. She’ll never altogether forget it, and— well, there you are. One doesn’t welcome anything like a reminder.”
“I’m sure it’s very upsetting, Mr. Alleyn. If I could have—”
“I know, I know.” And looking at Fox, Alleyn felt a spasm of self-distaste.
“Fox,” he said suddenly, “I’m up against a silly complexity in my own attitude to my job. I’ve tried to shut it off from my private life. I’ve adopted what I suppose the Russians would call an unrealistic approach: Troy in one compartment, the detection of crime in another. And now, by way of dotting me one on the wind, the fates have handed Troy this little affair on a platter. If there’s anything in it she’ll be a witness.”
“There may not be anything in it, Mr. Alleyn.”
“True enough. That’s precisely tHe remark I’ve been making to her for the last hour or so.”
Fox opened his eyes very wide. “Oh, yes,” said Alleyn, “she’s already thought there was something off-colour about the festivities at Ancreton.”
“Is that so?” Fox said slowly. “Is that the case?”
“It is indeed. She’s left us alone to talk it over. I can give you the story when you want it and so can she. But I’d better have your end first. What’s that paper you’ve got there?”
Fox handed it to him. “It came in to us yesterday, went through the usual channels, and finally the Chief got on to it and sent for me this evening. You’d gone by then, sir, but he asked me to have a word with you about it. White envelope to match, addressed in block capitals ‘C.I.D., Scotland Yard, London.’ Postmark, Victoria.”
Alleyn took the paper. It appeared to be a sheet from a block of faintly ruled notepaper. The lines were, unusually, a pale yellow, and a margin was ruled down the side. The message it contained was flatly explicit:
THE WRITER HAS REASON TO BELIEVE THAT SIR HENRY ANCRED’S DEATH WAS BROUGHT ABOUT BY THE PERSON WHO HAS RECEIVED THE MOST BENEFIT FROM IT.
“Water-mark, ‘Crescent Script’. People write these things,” said Fox. “You know yourself there may be nothing in it. But we’ve got to take the usual notice. Talk to the super at the local station, I suppose. And the doctor who attended the old gentleman. He may be able to put the matter beyond doubt. There’s an end of it.”
“He will if he can,” said Alleyn grimly. “You may depend upon that.”
“In the meantime, the A.C. suggested I should report to you and see about a chat with Mrs. Alleyn. He remembered Mrs. Alleyn had been at Ancreton before you came back.”
“Report to me? If anything comes of this, does he want me to take over?”
“Well, sir, I fancy he will. He mentioned, jokingly-like, that it’d be quite unusual if the investigating officer got his first statement on a case from his wife.”
“Facetious ass!” said Alleyn with improper emphasis.
Fox looked demurely down his nose.
“Oh, well,” said Alleyn, “let’s find Troy and we’ll hag over the whole blasted set-up. She’s in the studio. Come on.”
Troy received Fox cheerfully. “I know what it’s all about, Mr. Fox,” she said, shaking hands with him.
“I’m sure I’m very sorry—” Fox began.
“But you needn’t be,” Troy said quickly, linking her arm through Alleyn’s. “Why on earth should you be? If I’m wanted, here I am. What happens?”
“We sit down,” Alleyn said, “and I go over the whole story as you’ve told it to me. When I go wrong, you stop me, and when you think of anything extra, you put it in. That’s all, so far. The whole thing may be a complete washout, darling. Anonymous letter writers have the same affection for the Yard that elderly naturalists have for The Times. Now then. Here, Fox, to the best of my ability, is the Ancred saga.”
He went methodically through Troy’s account, correlating the events, tracing the several threads in and out of the texture of the narrative and gathering them together at the end.
“How’s that?” he asked her when he had finished. He was surprised to find her staring at him as if he had brought off a feat of sleight of hand.
“Amazingly complete and tidy,” she said.
“Well, Fox? What’s it amount to?”
Fox wiped his hand over his jaw. “I’ve been asking myself, sir,” he said, “whether you mightn’t find quite a lot of circumstances behind quite a lot of sudden demises that might sound funny if you strung them together. What I mean to say, a lot of big Houses keep rat-bane on the premises, and a lot of people can’t lay their hands on it when they want it. Things get mislaid.”
“Very true, Foxkin.”
“And as far as this old-fashioned book on embalming goes, Mr. Alleyn, I ask myself if perhaps somebody mightn’t have picked it up since the funeral and got round to wondering about it like Mrs. Alleyn has. You say these good people weren’t very keen on Miss Sonia Orrincourt and are probably feeling rather sore about the late old gentleman’s Will. They seem to be a highly-strung, excitable lot.”
“But I don’t think I’m a particularly highly-strung, excitable lot, Mr. Fox,” said Troy. “And I got the idea too.”
“There!” said Fox, clicking his tongue. “Putting my foot in it as usual, aren’t I, sir?”
“Tell us what else you ask yourself,” said Alleyn.
“Why, whether one of these disappointed angry people hasn’t let his imagination, or more likely hers, get the upper hand, and written this letter on the spur of the moment.”
“But what about the practical jokes, Mr. Fox?” said Troy.
“Very silly, mischievous behaviour. Committing a nuisance. If the little girl didn’t do them, and it looks as if she couldn’t have done them at all, then somebody’s brought off an unpleasant trick. Spiteful,” Fox added severely. “Trying to prejudice the old gentleman against her, as you suggest, I dare say. But that doesn’t necessarily mean murder. Why should it?”
“Why, indeed?” said Alleyn, taking him by the arm. “You’re exactly what we needed in this house, Br’er Fox. Let’s all have a drink.” He took his wife on his other arm, and together they returned to the sitting-room. The telephone rang as Troy entered and she answered it. Alleyn held Fox back and they stared at each other.
“Very convincing performance, Fox. Thank you.”
“Rum go, sir, all the same, don’t you reckon?”