Before Fox could reply Thomas began again.
“It’s an old piece of Devonport. Rather nice, really. Blue, with white swans sailing round it. Very large. In times of plenty we used to have a whole Stilton in it, but now, of course, only a tiny packet. Rather ridiculous, really, but it meant there was plenty of room.”
“For what?”
“It was Cedric who lifted the lid and discovered it. He gave one of his little screams, but beyond feeling rather irritated, I dare say nobody paid much attention. Then he brought it over to the table — did I forget to say it’s always left on the sideboard? — and dropped it in front of Pauline, who is in a very nervous condition anyway, and nearly shrieked the place down.”
“Dropped the cheese-dish? Or the cheese?”
“The cheese? Good heavens,” cried the scandalised Thomas, “what an idea! The book, to be sure.”
“What book?” Alleyn said automatically.
“The book, you know. The one out of the glass thing in the drawing-room.”
“Oh,” said Alleyn after a pause. “That book. On embalming?”
“And arsenic and all the rest of it. Too awkward and beastly, because, you know, Papa, by special arrangement, was. It upset everybody frightfully. In such very bad taste, everybody thought, and, of course, the cry of ‘Panty’ went up immediately on all sides, and there was Pauline practically in a dead faint for the second time in three days.”
“Yes?”
“Yes, and then Milly remembered seeing Sonia look at the book, and Sonia said she had never seen it before, and then Cedric read out some rather beastly bits about arsenic, and everybody began to remember how Barker couldn’t find the rat poison when it was wanted for Bracegirdle. Then Pauline and Desdemona looked at each other in such a meaning sort of way that Sonia became quite frantic with rage, and said she’d leave Ancreton there and then, only she couldn’t, because there wasn’t a train, so she went out in the rain and the governess-cart, and is now in bed with bronchitis, to which she is subject.”
“Still at Ancreton?”
“Yes, still there. Quite,” said Thomas. His expression became dazed, and he went off into another of his silences.
“And that,” Alleyn said, “is, of course, the discovery you mentioned on the telephone?”
“That? Discovery? What discovery? Oh, no!” cried Thomas. “I see what you mean. Oh, no, indeed, that was nothing compared to what we found afterwards in her room!”
“What did you find, Mr. Ancred, and in whose room?”
“Sonia’s,” said Thomas. “Arsenic.”
iii
“It was Cedric and the girls’ idea,” Thomas said. “After Sonia had gone out in the governess-cart they talked and talked. Nobody quite liked to say outright that perhaps Sonia had put rat poison in Papa’s hot drink, but even Milly remarked that Sonia had recently got into the way of making it. Papa said she made it better than any of the servants or even than Milly herself. She used to take it in and leave it at his bedside. Cedric remembered seeing Sonia with the Thermos flask in her hands. He passed her in the passage on his way to bed that very night.”
“It was at about this stage,” Thomas continued, “that somebody — I’ve forgotten quite whom — said that they thought Soma’s room ought to be searched. Jenetta and Fenella and Paul jibbed at this, but Dessy and Cedric and Pauline were as keen as mustard. I had promised to lend Caroline Able a book so I went away rather gladly. Caroline Able teaches the Difficult Children, including Panty, and she is very worried because of Panty not going bald enough. So it might have been an hour later that I went back to our part of the house. And there was Cedric lying in wait for me. Well, he’s the head of the house now, so I suppose I mustn’t be beastly about him. All mysterious and whispering, he was.”
“ ‘Ssh,’ he said. ‘Come upstairs.’ ”
“He wouldn’t say anything more. I felt awfully bored with all this, but I followed him up.”
“To Miss Orrincourt’s room?” Alleyn suggested as Thomas’s eyes had glazed again.
“That’s it. How did you guess? And there were Pauline and Milly and Dessy. I must tell you,” said Thomas delicately, “that Sonia has a little sort of suite of rooms near Papa’s for convenience. It wasn’t called anything, because Papa had run out of famous actresses’ names. So he had a new label done with ‘Orrincourt’ on it, and that really infuriated everybody, because Sonia, whatever anybody may care to say to the contrary, is a very naughty actress. Well, not an actress at all, really. Absolutely dire, you might say.”
“You found your sisters and Mrs. Henry Ancred in these rooms?”
“Yes. I must tell you that Sonia’s suite is in a tower. Like the tower your wife had, only Sonia’s tower is higher, because the architect who built Ancreton believed in quaintness. So Sonia has got a bedroom on top and then a bathroom, and at the bottom a boudoir. The bedroom’s particularly quaint, with a little door and steps up into the pepper-pot roof which makes a box-room. They are milling about in this box-room and Dessy had found the rat poison in one of Sonia’s boxes. It’s a preparation of arsenic. It says so on the label. Well!”
“What have you done with it?”
“So awkward!” said Thomas crossly. “They made me take it. To keep, they said, in case of evidence being needed. Cedric was very particular about it, having read detective books, and he wrapped it up in one of my handkerchiefs. So I’ve got it in my rooms here in London if you really want to see it.”
“We’ll take possession of it, I think,” said Alleyn with a glance at Fox. Fox made a slight affirmative rumble. “If it’s convenient, Mr. Ancred,” Alleyn went on, “Fox or I will drop you at your rooms and collect this tin.”
“I hope I can find it,” Thomas said gloomily.
“Find it?”
“One does mislay things so. Only the other day—” Thomas fell into one of his trances and this time Alleyn waited for something to break through. “I was just thinking, you know,” Thomas began rather loudly. “There we all were in her room and I looked out of the window. It was raining. And away down below, like something out of a Noah’s Ark, was the governess-cart creeping up the drive, and Sonia, in her fur coat, flapping the reins, I suppose, in the way she has. And when you come to think of it, there, according to Pauline and Dessy and Cedric and Milly, went Papa’s murderess.”
“But not according to you?” said Alleyn. He was putting away the eight anonymous letters. Fox had risen, and now stared down at their visitor as if Thomas was some large unopened parcel left by mistake in the room.
“To me?” Thomas repeated, opening his eyes very wide. “I don’t know. How should I? But you wouldn’t believe how uncomfortable it makes one feel.”
iv
To enter Thomas’s room was to walk into a sort of cross between a wastepaper basket and a workshop. Its principal feature was a large round table entirely covered with stacks of paper, paints, photographs, models for stage sets, designs for costumes, and books. In the window was an apparently unused desk. On the walls were portraits of distinguished players, chief among them Sir Henry himself. “Sit down,” invited Thomas, sweeping sheafs of papers from two chairs on to the floor. “I’ll just think where—” He began to walk round his table, staring rather vacantly at it. “I came in with my suitcase, of course, and then, you know, the telephone rang. It was much later than that when I wanted to find the letters, and I had put them carefully away because of showing them to you. And I found them. So I must have unpacked. And I can remember thinking: ‘It’s poison, and I’d better be careful of my handkerchief in case—’ ”